“Well,” said Billy, “you see, I thought it was perhaps his roundabout way of asking me to show him the plan, so I said I didn’t know where it was; that I rather thought you had destroyed it; and when I said that, the poor chap looked so disappointed that I showed him what it was like, by sketching it out on the ground with the point of a sail needle.”
“That is very interesting,” I said. “Here is paper and a pencil. Just reproduce on it, as nearly as you can, the sketch you made on the ground.”
The boy took the pencil and paper, and in a few minutes completed a rough but quite accurate plan of the bungalow, showing the relative positions of the several rooms in the front and rear portions of the house. I observed also that he indicated with scrupulous fidelity the position of every window and door, showing the possibility of passing from any one room to any other, through the passages and the living-room.
“This sketch does you credit,” I said. “It gives an excellent idea of the general arrangement of the house; but I really do not see how the information it affords is in the least degree likely to be of use to Van Ryn, even should he be shipwrecked a dozen times over. To speak quite frankly, I would very much rather that you had not made that sketch on the ground for his information. Do you think he understood it?”
“No,” confessed Billy, “I don’t believe he did, for he asked all sorts of silly questions about it that he wouldn’t have asked if he had understood the plan.”
“Ah, indeed!” said I. “Do you happen to remember any of those questions?”
“N–o, I don’t think I do,” replied Billy. “They were so awfully stupid that I didn’t pay much attention to them. I explained that those marks,”—pointing to the drawing—“represented doors; yet the silly ass couldn’t understand how the servants got from their room to the kitchen, nor how they brought our meals from the kitchen to the living-room without going outside and walking round the house. And he couldn’t understand how you and I got from our rooms to the living-room without going outside.”
“That’s too bad,” said I. “It seems to reflect upon your powers of description, doesn’t it, Billy?”
“It does, rather,” admitted the boy, “yet I did my best to make him understand. But he didn’t seem able to grasp that we were supposed to be looking down upon the bungalow, with the roof off. He persisted in thinking that we were looking square at it, and that the rooms in the rear were above those in the front of the house.”
“Stupid fellow!” I commented. “And was the house the only thing he manifested curiosity about?”