“I’ll bet you this cat is,” says he.
“You’ve got some notion about it,” says I.
“Not much of one,” says he, “but I’m guessin’, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Wigglesworth wanted somebody to find the cat and s-start there and go to walkin’ where p-p-pussy looked. See? That would give the direction to go. Go where she looked. If she l-looked south, walk south. If she l-looked north, walk north.”
“So far so good,” says I. “Go on.”
“The next looks easy. ‘Stop,’ it says. Well, ‘stop’ means to quit w-walkin’, don’t it?”
“Yes,” says I, “but you’re leavin’ out some-thin’.”
“What?” says he.
“Why,” says I, “the ‘Thirty and twenty and ten and forty-six.’”
“To be sure,” says he. He thought some more, and so did I.
“Maybe,” says I, “them figures means letters of the alphabet. A would be 1, and B would be 2, and so on. Let’s try it.”