Page 3 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

“Never mind: I found it. We forgot to bring it with us; Uncle left
it on the table next to the linguarium.” She grabbed a half-crumpled
sheet of note paper by the side of a large glass parallelepiped. “It says
to open the lid carefully and empty the bag into the linguarium, and
that we might have to shake some of them out because they haven’t
seen the light of day in a long time.”
“Piece of cake,” said Bob. “Then we can start packing. The last
hourly bus out of Verbo City leaves at four o’clock and we need to
go through all our stuff to make sure we’re not taking any
bookworms home with us.”
“Waste of time!” Lulu said scornfully. “You know Uncle Bunster
had the house fumigated before we came to visit. “I’m going to
spend my last hours here writing a few choice paragraphs in my diary
about my idiot little brother.”
“Baloney!” Bob got excited easily, an amusing physiognomical
display easily triggered and modulated by his sister. “He gassed the
place just before we got here, and I’ll bet he’s bought at least fifty
moldy old books since then. I saw the exterminators’ contract: he’s
already voided the warranty. And I am just as tall as you are: you just
happened to be born five minutes ahead of me. Remember: we are
fraternal twins.”
Lulu pruned her brow, nose and lips. “Nonsense! That’s just
another sexist legacy of English: we could just as logically be sororal
twins!” Bob had his own, but quite similar, means of riling his sibling.
“And you know that Uncle said he would find a better word for us.”
Features unwrinkled, she put down the note. “Anyway, let’s get this
over with so you can go off and pick invisible nits somewhere out of
my sight.”
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