The underwriter surveyed her thoughtfully but with covert approval. Wary though he was, like all idealists, regarding the things near to his soul, it now for the first time struck him that he wished very much that Miss Maitland should understand what meant so much to him. And he felt that he could make her understand; hitherto it had not seemed so.
"I wonder if I could really show you," he answered, half to himself, and there was something in his tone that made the girl reply, "I wish you would try."
"Let's start all over, then," said Smith, buoyantly. "We'll begin right here. Now, this is a map desk in which the maps are kept and on top of which they are laid out when in use. The map desk is really the home of underwriting, just as the stage is of the drama. And just as there are stage conventions, certain things which are taken for granted, such as the idea that a character on the stage cannot escape over the footlights into the audience—that there is an imaginary blank wall between the audience and the players—so we have our conventions and symbols in the maps." He called for Boston One, which the map clerk laid instantly open at his elbow. It was a large volume bound in gray canvas, perhaps two by three feet in dimensions, and weighing several pounds. Smith turned to a page which showed some of the blocks surrounding the Common, and Miss Maitland bent close to look. "All these little colored objects represent buildings, red for brick and yellow for frame; and they are drawn on a scale of fifty feet to the inch. We get so accustomed to them that automatically we grow to visualize the buildings themselves from these diagrams. See, there is the State House on top of the hill; there's Beacon Street; there's—"
"Beacon Street! Where is number forty-five? I want to see what that looks like."
"What number did you say?" inquired Smith.
"Forty-five."
"There it is."
"Why, so it is! What is that queer little wiggle sticking out of the front?"
"It looks like a bay window in the front room of the second floor. Is there one in that house?"
"Yes. . . . Have you got Deerfield Street in this map?"