five o'clock
put in Ted mischievously . `` Indeed it was ! '' responded Mr. Hazen . `` The shop would then have been barred and bolted at five o'clock , I suppose , and Alexander Graham Bell might have had a million bright ideas for all the good they would have done him . But at that golden period of our history , if an ambitious fellow like Watson wished to put in extra hours of work , the more slothful ones had no authority to stand over him with a club and say he should n't . Therefore the young apprentice toiled on with Mr. Bell , unmolested ; and Charles Williams , the proprietor of the shop , was perfectly willing he should . One evening , when the two were alone , Mr. Bell remarked , ` If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sound , I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically . '