Alexander Graham Bell: Master of Sound #7 (7 page)

“I’m happy to take a break from packing my trunk,” Aleck admitted.

Professor Bell retrieved a large poster from one corner of the room. He took some time placing it on an easel and adjusting it so that everyone could see. As he set this up, Mrs. Bell came into the room with a tray. On it was a large teapot, six cups, and a tray of sweets as well as a pitcher of cream. She set it on the table, then poured cream into each cup before filling them with tea.

“Please,” she told the children, who eagerly
reached for the sweets first.

As soon as she left the room, Professor Bell faced the children, their mouths full of cake.

“Visible Speech,” he said, tapping the poster. “Here are the thirty-four symbols that show every sound a human mouth can make.”

At the top of the poster was a line drawing of a face, with an arrow pointing out of the mouth.

The bottom was a confusing array of charts and figures. Felix tried to make sense of it, but he couldn’t.

“In a moment,” Professor Bell said, “Aleck and I will do a little demonstration. But first, Aleck, would you recite something to show the children here what good elocution sounds like? Watch his lips and tongue as he speaks,” he directed.

Aleck stepped forward. He cleared his throat and lifted his chin, throwing his shoulders back.

“How doth the little busy bee,” he began, “improve each shining hour? And gather honey all the day, from every opening flower.”

“His lips definitely looked different for different letters,” Maisie said.

Professor Bell nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! That is why I believe my system can teach the deaf to
speak. And if they can learn to speak, they’ll be allowed to go to school and to get jobs.”

“Shall I?” Aleck asked.

His face showed how proud he was of his father’s system. Felix thought of his own father, how proud he’d feel when he and Maisie would come to his studio and he could show them his latest paintings.

Aleck left the room, and Professor Bell took the poster off the easel and rested it on a table so that they could still see it. He replaced it on the easel with a large pad of paper.

“Give me some words,” he asked them.

“Rain,” Hadley said.

“Cake,” Rayne said, taking the last piece from the plate.

“Good!” Professor Bell said, busily writing symbols on the paper. “Another?”

“Home,” Felix said.

The professor called for Aleck to return.

“Here I’ve written your words in my Visible Speech symbols. Aleck, can you read the words?”

Aleck looked at what his father had written. To Maisie, the symbols looked a little like Greek letters and a little like the iron from her Monopoly game.

But Aleck quickly said, “Rain. Cake. Home.” He added, “Easy ones.”

Professor Bell beamed. “With this system, we can change the lives of the deaf.”

“And with science,” Aleck added. “Even if I run off to sea someday—”

His father interrupted. “Hogwash!”

“I’ll still figure out a way to use sound to help the deaf hear,” he said, ignoring his father.

Maisie and Felix glanced at each other.

“I believe you will,” Maisie said quietly.

“But for now, you are off to London, son,” Professor Bell said.

He handed the children a sheaf of paper.

“Practice these elocution lessons. The busy-bee one is there. Start with that. And we’ll continue next week,” he told them.

“Um…” Maisie stammered. “Um…”

Professor Bell shook his head. “Please,” he said, as if she’d hurt his ears. “Never utter that again.”

“It’s just that we can’t come next week because…um…”

He glared at Maisie and she clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Because
we’re
going to London, too!” Felix blurted.

“What a strange coincidence,” Professor Bell said. “Shall we take you in our carriage to the station?”

“That would be lovely,” Hadley chimed in.

“And your parents are meeting you there?” Professor Bell asked.

“That’s another coincidence,” Maisie said. “We were here visiting
our
grandfather, and now we’re going
home
to London.”

Professor Bell looked skeptical.

The four children held their breath until he said, “We are departing promptly at noon.”

Rayne glanced out the large window covered with rain, then back at the Professor.

“You’re free to wait here,” he said.

Aleck and his father started to leave the room.

“Excuse me,” Rayne said. “Is there any more cake?”

“I’ll see what I can find,” the professor said with a scowl.

Rayne rewarded him with her brightest smile, which made Professor Bell smile, too.

Maisie watched this with a combination of annoyance and awe. Rayne Ziff was one of those
girls who could bat her eyelashes and show off her dimples and get anything she wanted. Including, Maisie thought, her brother, Felix, who was watching her with puppy-dog eyes. But as annoying as that kind of girl could be, when you are homeless and hungry on a rainy day in Scotland, staying warm by a fire and eating cake was not a bad thing.

Rayne, Maisie decided, was coming in very handy.

A
t the train station, the children busied themselves with staring up at the ornate vaulted ceiling and gaping at the people waiting for trains.

“Everyone is so fancy,” Rayne said, admiring the hat of a woman standing beside them. It was dark brown velvet with a large peacock feather hanging from it.

“Every
thing
is so fancy,” Hadley added.

The Bell family stood just a short distance away from them. Felix and Maisie watched Professor and Mrs. Bell saying good-bye to Aleck, who looked miserable over leaving home.

“How do you propose we pay for tickets on that train to London?” Felix whispered to his sister.

“I’m figuring that out right now,” she said.

“Sure,” Felix said, feeling as miserable as Aleck looked.

Actually, Maisie did have a plan. She was just waiting for the right time to implement it.

And the right time presented itself at that very moment.

The big board with the list of train arrivals and departures that hung from the ceiling of the station went into action. Letters and numbers flipped and rotated upward and there at the top was the train to London. In the distance, Maisie could hear it rumbling down the tracks. It let out a long, low whistle.

As soon as the whistle died out, Maisie shouted, “Our tickets! Our tickets! Someone has stolen our tickets!”

She patted her pockets frantically.

It seemed that every person in the train station turned to look at Maisie.

“Poor child,” the woman with the fancy hat said.

“It’s the pickpockets,” added a man who looked very much like a penguin, shaking his head.

“How will we ever get to London to see our parents?” Maisie cried.

Felix stared at her with a mixture of embarrassment and admiration.

Out of the corner of her eye, Maisie saw Mrs. Bell whispering to her husband, a worried look on her face.

“And with Mother sick, this will just ruin her,” Maisie added.

For effect, she covered her face in her hands until she heard footsteps approaching. She let herself smile a little before she dropped her hands and gazed up into Professor Bell’s face.

“Now, now,” he said, “don’t be upset. We’ll get you new tickets.”

“You will?” Felix blurted.

“Oh, we couldn’t,” Maisie said. “You’ve already been so kind.”

“The pickpocket problem is a travesty,” Professor Bell said. “And to steal from children…well, it’s just unconscionable.”

The train appeared, chugging to a stop in front of them.

“Wait right here,” Professor Bell said, and off he went to the ticket window.

By the time the passengers had unloaded and
new passengers had lined up to board, Maisie was holding four tickets to London in her hand.

Aleck sat beside Felix on the train, but he didn’t speak much. Instead, he stared out the window, gazing at the passing landscape blurred by rain.

“Where does your grandfather live?” Felix asked him.

Too often he and Maisie had lost track of the person they met and then they spent too much time trying to find that person again. This time he wanted an address.

“On Harrington Square,” he said without looking at Felix. “Right across from Harrington Gardens.”

“Harrington Square,” Felix repeated the address help himself memorize it. “Across from Harrington Gardens.”

Now Aleck did turn to face Felix. “Do you know it?” he asked.

“Um. Yes?” Felix said hesitantly. What if Aleck asked him questions about it? But this way when Aleck saw them nearby, he wouldn’t think it strange.

Aleck gave a little nod and turned his attention back to staring out the window.

Behind them, the girls whispered together.

“How do you do it?” Hadley was asking Maisie.

“I don’t know
why
it works,” Maisie said. “All I know is that we both, or should I say
all
, have to hold an object. We have to have the shard with us—”

“What shard?” Rayne asked.

Maisie pulled the shard from the Ming vase from her pocket.

“This,” she said. “For some reason we can’t time travel without it, so I always keep it on hand.”

Rayne and Hadley studied the shard in Maisie’s upturned palm.

“And,” Maisie added, closing her fingers around the shard and tucking it back in her pocket, “it only works with twins.”

“How do we get back?” Hadley asked, her voice suddenly serious.

“We give the object to Aleck,” Maisie said.

She hesitated.

“And, this is tricky, but he has to give us advice or information or something. That’s the hard part,” she said, thinking about Great-Aunt Maisie.

“Have you given him the magnet?” Rayne asked her.

Maisie shook her head. “Not yet.”

Hadley’s face was scrunched with concentration. “We’d better stay close to Aleck,” she said finally. “If we lose him, we won’t get back. Right?”

“That’s right,” Maisie said. She grinned at Hadley. “So,” she said, “how do you like my secret?”

Hadley grinned, too. “It’s a good one.”

Maisie settled back in her seat, feeling happy.

“And Felix said only Pickworths could do it,” she said, more to herself than to the other girls.

“What did you say?” Hadley asked her.

“Oh, nothing,” Maisie said. “Felix tried to convince me that it wouldn’t work with you and Rayne.”

“But you said something about Pickworths, didn’t you?” Hadley said.

“That’s my great-great-grandfather, who built Elm Medona and put all the stuff in The Treasure Chest,” Maisie explained. “Phinneas Pickworth.”

Hadley and Rayne looked at each other. Then they looked at Maisie, both of their face awash in surprise.

“What?” Maisie said.

“Our great-great-grandmother was
Amy
Pickworth,” Rayne gushed. “Phinneas Pickworth’s twin sister.”

Felix’s head popped over the seat in front of them. Although they had been whispering about The Treasure Chest, this news was given loudly.

“Amy Pickworth?” Felix said. “But she disappeared in the Congo when she was sixteen.”

Rayne was nodding. “Remember I said we had a relative from Newport who died tragically? That was Amy Pickworth.”

Maisie tried to take in this information, but it didn’t quite make sense.

“But if she’s your great-great-grandmother, she had a baby when she disappeared?”

“Right,” Hadley said. “They got married young in those days. She married some duke who was killed in a battle. He never even met his daughter.”

“He died before she was born,” Rayne added. “Amy and her brother Phinneas left her baby with the nursemaid like they used to do in those days and went to the Congo for big-game hunting to lift her spirits.”

“And she disappeared,” Hadley finished.

“But,” Maisie said happily, “this makes us related!”

The four children all smiled at each other.

When the train pulled into the station in
London, the four children stayed close by Aleck. This made Felix feel better, not just because they needed to stick with him, but also because the station was enormous and crowded. People jostled past them and crushed against them as they moved toward the main doors.