At first nothing worked at all. With one telephone in my study, I put the other out in the courtyard and had the Lady Maria listen while I tried to communicate. The knights and ladies, the boys who were being trained as knights, and the servants tended to flock from all over the castle to watch my latest attempt. At least they weren’t laughing at me, yet.

“Did you hear anything?” I’d yell from the door of my chambers.

“Nothing that time,” she would call back in what were meant to be encouraging tones.

Then my steel ovals were ready, and I had an excuse to put the glass telephones back up on the shelf while I worked the spells of light. Since I had to do each individually, it took all day, and it took another day for the servants to attach them inside to the ceiling of the stairway. But on Sunday, in time for service, they were ready.

I had Gwen wake me early and was at the bottom of the stairs before anyone else. “On,” I said in my deepest voice, and all the lights blazed on. The glass light inside the door was the brightest of all, but the steel plates gave a rich and somber light that I thought most appropriate. I stood modestly outside the stairwell, letting everyone else precede me, smiling in spite of myself when I heard their admiring comments.

But the telephones continued to elude me. After two more days of studying my books, I thought I had found the spell, and again set the Lady Maria in the courtyard with one instrument while I talked into the other. “All powers of earth and air must obey the spells of wizardry,” I said into my own telephone. Gwen had laughed at that until she could hardly stand up, but it seemed safe to say, since no one seemed able to hear me anyway.

I hurried out into the courtyard. “Could you hear that?”

The Lady Maria didn’t answer at first. The people with her were smiling, either in amusement or encouragement, but she looked both puzzled and somewhat concerned. She came toward me, carrying the glass telephone.