Alexander Graham Bell: Master of Sound #7 Read Online Free PDF Page B

A gloved hand reached across the greenery.
    “May I?” the boy attached to the hand asked.
    Maisie grabbed hold, and he yanked her free.
    The boy looked amused. “Didn’t want to pay?” he said.
    “Hey! How about me?” Hadley called.
    The boy put his hands on his hips and surveyed Hadley in the bush.
    “Did you think we wouldn’t see you there?” he asked as he marched over to help her out.
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hadley told him.
    Across the street was a park, all soggy and gray in the drizzle. A group of boys stood there, holding a little dog by its collar.
    “Haven’t you come to see the talking dog?” the boy asked. He narrowed his eyes at Maisie and Hadley. “What in the world are you two wearing?”
    The boy lifted the corner of Maisie’s rain slicker and examined it. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “Why, it’s keeping you dry from the rain!”
    “Well,” Maisie said, “it’s a raincoat. That’s why.”
    He nodded. “But what is it made out of?”
    “Vinyl, I think,” Maisie said, realizing that vinyl had probably not yet been invented in a time when boys walked around wearing gloves and breeches and horse-drawn carriages lined the streets.
    “Aleck!” one of the boys called from the park. “Hurry along now. We have to go to hear Father shortly.”
    The boy—Aleck—grinned at Maisie and Felix. “I won’t charge you,” he said. “This time.”
    As they followed him across the street to the park, Hadley grabbed Maisie’s arm.
    “Where are we?” she whispered, her voice shrill with excitement.
    “The question,” Maisie said, “is
when
are we.”
    The two girls reached the park, and Hadley took in the boys with their breeches and boots.
    “Is it…?” She swallowed hard. “Are we…?”
    Maisie nodded. “This is my secret,” she said. “We’ve gone back in time.”
    Hadley’s eyes shone under the lamplight.
    “I always wondered if that was possible,” she said. “My mother told me that my—”
    “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Aleck announced.
    The other boys snickered.
    “I shall now endeavor to have my faithful dog, Trouve, talk,” he continued, ignoring them.
    “He sounds British,” Hadley whispered to Maisie.
    “Ha!” one of the boys said, turning to her. “You’re in Edinburgh, lassie. He’s Scottish.”
    “Not after tomorrow,” another boy added.
    Aleck had started the dog growling, and Trouve continued without pause.
    “This is talking, you say?” the tallest boy said dismissively.
    At that, Aleck reached into the dog’s mouth and seemed to shove his hand all the way down his throat.
    “
Ow a oo ga ma
,” the dog uttered.
    “How are you, Grandma?” Maisie shouted. “That dog did just talk!”
    “By Jove,” the tall boy exclaimed. “This is muchmore impressive than the automaton.”
    Aleck beamed at the small group before him. “After the success of that,” he said, “I had to try it on a live subject.”
    “We built an automaton head that talked,” the older boy explained to Maisie and Hadley. “I constructed the throat and larynx, and Aleck built the lips and skull.”
    “Melly left the hardest part for me,” Aleck said.
    “You see,” Melly continued, “when we forced air through the windpipe with bellows, our man said
Mama
.”
    “That it did,” the tall boy agreed. “I heard it myself.”
    “Just wait,” Aleck said. “Some day I’ll invent something that will even let Mama hear.”
    As if on cue, a woman holding a black umbrella over her head entered the park.
    “We’re going to be late,” she said in slow, overly pronounced syllables.
    “I’ll bring Trouve upstairs,” Melly said.
    “Don’t dillydally,” their mother warned.
    Aleck pressed his lips to his mother’s forehead and spoke carefully. “May I bring my new friends along?”
    His mother’s gaze landed on Maisie and Hadley.
    “Peculiar clothing,” she said.
    “Vinyl,” Aleck said, his lips moving against his