Page 12 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City
P. 12

Having finished in the library, they passed through the connecting
        door to the bathroom they had been using during their visit. They
        drank some tap water, despite its off-taste, after making sure nothing
        was  hiding  at  the  bottom  of  their  glasses.  One  of  the  missing
        sesquipedalians started with “bath-”, but Bob was fairly certain it had
        nothing to do with bathing. Once they ascertained the sink, toilet and
        counter were free of loose words they moved on to their bedroom.
           After surveying the scattered clothes, books, toys and games on
        every  horizontal  surface,  Lulu  said,  “Look,  Bob:  we  have  to  pack,
        anyway, so let’s get everything into our suitcases before we look for
        any jail-breaking jawbreakers.”
           Bob sighed. “Okay. That’s an efficient use of our time. But look
        out  for  wayward  words:  maybe  they’re  attracted  to  something  we
        have.”
           And  they  fell  to  stuffing  their  bags  with  quiet  careful
        concentration.  Lulu  shook  out  her  blouses  before  folding  and
        stacking them. Bob had fewer clothes, but more gadgets; as he was
        about to toss one of them into his suitcase he suddenly stopped.
           “Hey, look at this, Lulu! I’ve got one. It was trying to fit into the
        scaly spine of my scale-model dinosaur.” He checked the list. “Yep:
        it’s ‘micropachycephalosaurus.’”
           They stuffed their suitcases until the chamber was bare. As soon
        as  their  gaze  elevated  beyond  the  lower  half  of  the  room,  another
        sesquipedalian became evident. It was struggling to retain a foothold
        on a glass picture frame enclosing an aerial view of Stonehenge. But
        “photoreconnaissance”  proved  to  be  the  only  visible  potentially
        ambulatory word in the room.
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