Page 22 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

“Um, don’t do that yet, Uncle.” Lulu had a frightful expression of
solicitude stretched across the normally placid canvas of her face.
“Eh? Why not?”
“Well, sir,” said Bob, manfully but gulpingly. “It might actually be
here.”
“I didn’t see it in the tank.” Bunster blinked. “Did you? I can’t
imagine in what it might find affinity among these publisher’s props.”
Lulu picked up the conversational thread thick as a hangman’s
noose. “We mean that it is somewhere else in the house. You see,
Uncle, we had a little accident.”
“What?” Bunster barked, eyebrows and jaw fleeing nose
oppositionally.
Bob, miserable but unchoked, went on. “It happened like this,
Uncle: the wordsack came open after we got here and all the words
ran away while our backs were turned and we’ve just spent the last
half hour running around like crazy with the heat on getting them all
back in place before you returned. But we thought there were only
twenty. Sorry.”
“Sorry! Why didn’t you tell me sooner? The heat’s off now, and
the unfortunate multipede will perish if we don’t find it immediately!
I hope—for everyone’s sake—that it’s not too late! Quick—tell me:
did you carefully search both bathrooms?”
Bob frowned, stringing beads of perspiration. “Yes, but maybe—”
Lulu jumped out of her chair. “We didn’t check our bathroom as
thoroughly as yours, Uncle.”
Bunster scowled. “Then it’s got to be there.” He hastened through
the connecting door to the library and the guest bath beyond.

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