Edith Nesbit 
The Book of Dragons 

Edmund was a boy.
The people who did not like him said that he was the most tiresome boy that ever lived, but his grandmother and his other friends said that he had an inquiring mind.
And his granny often added that he was the best of boys.
But she was very kind and very old.
Edmund loved to find out about things.
Perhaps you will think that in that case he was constant in his attendance at
school, since there, if anywhere, we may learn whatever there is to be learned. But Edmund did not want to learn things: He wanted to find things out, which is quite different.
His inquiring mind led him to take clocks to pieces to see what made
them go, to take locks off doors to see what made them stick.
It was Edmund who cut open the India rubber ball to see what
made it bounce, and he never did see, any more than you did
when you tried the same experiment.