Not Quite Eighteen Part 10

But Amy had a listener, though she little suspected it, and, what was worse, a listener who was recording every word that she uttered!

The "new machine" of which Mrs. Carpenter had spoken was really a very clever and ingenious one. It was the adaptation of the phonographic principle to the person of a doll. Mr. Carpenter had succeeded in interesting somebody with capital in his project, and the dolls were at that moment being manufactured for the apparatus, the construction of which he kept in his own hands. This apparatus was held in small cylinders, just large enough to fit into the body of a doll and contain, each, a few sentences, which the doll would seem to speak when set in an upright position.

These cylinders were just ready, and standing in a row waiting to receive their "charges," which were to be put into them through the tin funnels fitted for the purpose. Amy, as she sat on the floor, was exactly opposite one of these funnels, and all her angry words pa.s.sed into, and became a part of, the mechanism of the doll. After this, no matter how many pretty words might be uttered softly into that cylinder, none of them could make any impression; the doll was full. It could hold no more.

But no one knew that the doll was full. Amy, her fit of pa.s.sion over, fell asleep on the floor, and when her father's step sounded below, waked in a calmer mood. She was sorry that she had been so naughty, and tried to make up for it by being more helpful and patient in the evening and next day. Her mother easily forgave her, and she did not find it hard to forgive herself, and soon forgot the event of that unhappy afternoon. Mr. Carpenter sat down in front of his cylinders that night, and filled them all, as he supposed, with nice little sentences to please and surprise small doll owners, such as "Good morning, Mamma.

Shall I put on my pink or my olive frock this morning?" or "Good-night, Mamma. I'm so sleepy!" or bits of nursery rhymes,--Bo Peep or Jack and Jill or Little Boy Blue. Then, when the phonographs were filled, the machinery went away to be put in the dolls, and Mr. Carpenter began on a fresh set.

Mrs. Carpenter, meanwhile, had finished her big job of sewing, so she felt less hurried, and had more time for the baby. The weather was beautiful, things went well at school, and altogether life seemed pleasant to Amy, and she found it easy to be kind and good-natured.

This agreeable state of things lasted through the autumn. The Dolliphone, as Mr. Carpenter had christened his invention, proved a hit.

Orders poured in from all over the United States, and from England and France, and the manufactory was taxed to its utmost extent. At last one of Mr. Carpenter's inventions had turned out a success, and his spirits rose high.

"We've fetched it this time, Mother," he told his wife. "The stock's going up like all possessed, and the dolls are going out as fast as we can get them ready. Why, we've had orders from as far off as Australia!

China'll come next, I suppose, or the Cannibal Islands. There's no end to the money that's in it."

"I'm glad, Robert, I'm sure," returned Mrs. Carpenter; "but don't count too much upon it all. I've thought a heap of that self-acting churn, you remember."

"Pshaw! the churn never did amount to shucks anyhow," said her husband, who had the true inventor's faculty for forgetting the mischances of the past in the contemplation of the hopes of the future. "It was just a little dud to make folks open their eyes, any way. This Dolliphone is different. It's bound to sell like wild-fire, once it gets to going.

We'll be rich folks before we know it, Mother."

"That'll be nice," said Mrs. Carpenter, with a dry, unbelieving cough.

She did not mean to be as discouraging as she sounded, but a woman can scarcely be the wife of an unsuccessful genius for fifteen years, and see the family earnings vanish down the throat of one invention after another, without becoming outwardly, as well as inwardly, discouraged.

"Now, don't be a wet blanket, Mother," said Mr. Carpenter, good-humoredly. "We've had some upsets in our calculation, I confess, but this time it's all coming out right, as you'll see. And I wanted to ask you about something, and that is what you'd think of Amy's having one of the dolls for her Christmas? Don't you think it'd please her?"

"Why, of course; but do you think you can afford it, Robert? The dolls are five dollars, aren't they?"

"Yes, to customers they are, but I shouldn't have to pay anything like that, of course. I can have one for cost price, say a dollar seventy-five; so if you think the child would like it, we'll fix it so."

"Well, I should be glad to have Amy get one," said Mrs. Carpenter, brightening up. "And it seems only right that she should, when you invented it and all. She's been pretty good these last weeks, and she'll be mightily tickled."

So it was settled, but the pile of orders to be filled was so incessant that it was not till Christmas Eve that Mr. Carpenter could get hold of a doll for his own use, and no time was left in which to dress it. That was no matter, Mrs. Carpenter declared; Amy would like to make the clothes herself, and it would be good practice in sewing. She hunted up some pieces of cambric and flannel and sc.r.a.ps of ribbon for the purpose, and when Amy woke on Christmas morning, there by her side lay the big, beautiful creature, with flaxen hair, long-lashed blue eyes, and a dimple in her pink chin. Beside her was a parcel containing the materials for her clothes and a new spool of thread, and on the doll's arm was pinned a paper with this inscription:--

"_For Amy, with a Merry Christmas from Father and Mother._

"_Her name is Dolly Phone._"

Amy's only doll up to this time had been a rag one, manufactured by her mother, and you can imagine her delight. She hugged Dolly Phone to her heart, kissed her twenty times over, and examined all her beauties in detail,--her lovely bang, her hands, and her little feet, which had brown kid shoes sewed on them, and the smile on her lips, which showed two tiny white teeth. She stood her up on the quilt to see how tall she was, and as she did so, wonder of wonders, out of these smiling red lips came a voice, sharp and high-pitched, as if a canary-bird or a Jew's-harp were suddenly endowed with speech, and began to talk to her!

What did the voice say? Not "Good-morning, Mamma," or "I'm so sleepy!"

or "Mistress Mary quite contrary," or "Twinkle, twinkle, little star,"--none of these things. Her sister dolls might have said these things; what Dolly Phone said, speaking fast and excitedly, was,--

"It's unjust! Mamma is as mean as she can be! Scolding me because that old baby wouldn't go to sleep! I hate everybody! I wish I was dead! I wish everybody else was dead!" And then, in a different tone, a good deal deeper, "Good-morning, ma-m--" and there the voice stopped suddenly.

Amy had listened to this remarkable address with astonishment. That her beautiful new baby could speak, was delightful, but what horrible things she said!

"How queerly you talk, darling!" she cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing the doll into her arms again. "What is the matter? Why do you speak so to me? Are you alive, or only making believe? I'm not mean; what makes you say I am?

And, oh! why do you wish you were dead?"

Dolly stared full in her face with an unwinking smile. She looked perfectly good-natured. Amy began to think that she was dreaming, or that the whole thing was some queer trick.

"There, there, dear!" she cried, patting the doll's back, "we won't say any more about it. You love me now, I know you do!"

Then, very gently and cautiously, she set Dolly on her feet again.

"Perhaps she'll say something nice this time," she thought hopefully.

Alas! the rosy lips only uttered the self-same words. "Mean--unjust--I hate everybody--I wish everybody was dead," in sharp, unpitying sequence. Worst of all, the phrases began to have a familiar sound to Amy's ear. She felt her cheeks burn with a sudden red.

"Why," she thought, "that was what I said in the workshop the day I was so cross. How could the doll know? Oh, dear! she's so lovely and so beautiful, but if she keeps on talking like this, what shall I do?"

Deep in her heart struggled an uneasy fear. Mother would hear the doll!

Mother might suspect what it meant! At all hazards, Dolly must be kept from talking while mother was by.

She was so quiet and subdued when she went downstairs to breakfast, with the doll in her arms, that her father and mother could not understand it. They had looked forward to seeing her boisterously joyful. She kissed them, and thanked them, and tried to seem like her usual self, but mothers' eyes are sharp, and Mrs. Carpenter detected the look of trouble.

"What's the matter, dear?" she whispered. "Don't you feel well?"

"Oh, yes! very well. Nothing's the matter." Amy whispered back, keeping the terrible Dolly sedulously p.r.o.ne, as she spoke.

"Come, Amy, let's see your new baby," said Mr. Carpenter. "She's a beauty, ain't she? Half of her was made in this house, did you know that? Set her up, and let's hear her talk."

"She's asleep now," faltered Amy. "But she's been talking up-stairs. She talks very nicely, Papa. She's tired now, truly she is."

"Nonsense! she isn't the kind that gets tired. Her tongue won't ache if she runs on all day; she's like some little girls in that. Stand her up, Amy, I want to hear her. I've never seen one of 'em out of the shop before. She looks wonderfully alive, doesn't she, Mother?"

But Amy still hesitated. Her manner was so strange that her father grew impatient at last, and, reaching out, took the doll from her, and set it sharply on the table. The little b.u.t.ton on the sole of the foot set the curious instrument within in motion. As prepared phrases were rolled off in shrill succession, Mr. Carpenter leaned forward to listen. When the sounds ended, he raised his head with a look of bewilderment.

"Why--why--what is the creature at?" he exclaimed. "That isn't what I put into her. 'I Wish I was dead! Wish everybody else was dead!' I can't understand it at all. I charged all the dolls myself, and there wasn't a word like that in the whole batch. If the others have gone wrong like this, it's all up with our profits."

He looked so troubled and down-hearted that Amy could bear it no longer.

"It's all my fault!" she cried, bursting into tears. "Somehow it's all my fault, though I can't tell how, for it was I who said those things. I said those very things, Papa, in your workshop one day when I was in a temper. Don't you recollect the day, Mother,--the day when I didn't go to the picnic, and Baby wouldn't go to sleep, and I slapped him, and you boxed my ears? I went up-stairs, and I was crying, and I said,--yes, I think I said every word of those things, though I forgot all about them till Dolly said them to me this morning, and how she could possibly know, I can't imagine."

"But I can imagine," said her father. "Where did you sit that day, Amy?"

"On the floor, by the door."

"Was there a row of things close by, with tin funnels stuck in them and a cloth over the top?"

"I think there was. I recollect the funnels."

"Then that's all right!" exclaimed Mr. Carpenter, his face clearing up.

"Those were the phonographs, Mother, and, don't you see, she must have been exactly opposite one of the funnels, and her voice went in and filled it. It's the best kind of good luck that that cylinder happened to be put into her doll. If all that bad language had gone to anybody else, there would have been the mischief to pay. Folks would have been writing to the papers, as like as not, or the ministers preaching against the dolls as a bad influence. It would have ruined the whole concern, and all your fault, Amy."

"Oh, Papa, how dreadful! how perfectly dreadful!" was all Amy could say, but she sobbed so wildly that her father's anger melted.

"There, don't cry," he said more kindly; "we won't be too hard on you on Christmas Day. Wipe your eyes, and we'll try to think no more about it, especially as the spoiled doll has fallen to your own share, and no real harm is done."