human
Why--why--what is the creature at? he exclaimed.
gpt
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.
human
It's all my fault! she cried, bursting into tears.
gpt
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.
human
But I can imagine, said her father.
gpt
Where did you sit that day, Amy?
human
On the floor, by the door.
gpt
Was there a row of things close by, with tin funnels stuck in them and a cloth over the top?
human
I think there was. I recollect the funnels.
gpt
Then that's all right! exclaimed Mr. Carpenter, his face clearing up.
human
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.
gpt
Oh, Papa, how dreadful! how perfectly dreadful!
human
There, don't cry, he said more kindly;
gpt
You see, Amy, she said that night when they chanced to be alone,
human
Yes--because of the doll,--of her inside, I mean. It heard.
gpt
But if the doll hadn't heard, some one would have heard all the same.
human
Do you mean God?
gpt
Yes. He hears every word that we say, the minister tells us, and writes them all down in a book. If it frightened you to have the doll repeat the words you had forgotten, think how much more it will frighten you, and all of us, when that book is opened and all the wrong things we have ever said are read out for the whole world to hear.