“Will you not permit us to see the beautiful pebbles?” I asked.
Tcharn hesitated.
“Will you let me see your moving house?” he demanded.
I nearly yelled with delight. I had been searching my brain for some way to win this strange personage to our side, and he promptly put himself in our hands by acknowledging his curiosity concerning our machine. But this proved his intelligence, too, and betrayed his mechanical instinct, so that it increased our respect for him.
“We will explain to you our moving house, which is the most wonderful thing ever made by the hands of man,” I answered, seriously, “and we will also take you to ride in it, that you may know how and why it moves. But in return you must take us to your dwelling and show us the pebbles.”
I was rather surprised that he consented readily.
“It is a bargain,” said he, quietly, and Ilalah whispered that his word might be depended upon.
So we all walked out of the forest to where we had left the car, which Tcharn first examined from the outside with minute intentness.
“Here is a man who might steal my patents, if he lived in our world,” remarked the inventor, with a smile. But as there was no danger to be apprehended Moit took pains to explain to the dwarf how the machine would float and move in the water as well as travel upon the land, and then he took the little Indian inside and showed him all the complicated mechanism and the arrangements for promoting the comfort and convenience of the passengers.
Tcharn listened with absorbed interest, and if he failed to comprehend some of the technical terms—which is very probable, as I was obliged to translate most of the description and there were no words in the native language to express mechanical terms—he allowed neither word nor look to indicate the fact.