Page 46 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

Lulu munched thoughtfully on a giant deer mouse. “Let me put it
all together in the way that makes the most sense. How’s this? ‘Once
you can admit you have forgotten’.”
Bob brushed a bit of tiger tail off the table. “I will conditionally
accept it. Let us move on.”
“All right, Mr. Big Shot. What do you make of this at the beginning
of line two? Martha, Jerome, Helvetia, Moses, Connee and Samuel—
all piled together.”
“Just a bunch of names; doesn’t mean anything else to me,” said
Bob. “Let’s just leave it as ‘names’ for now.”
“Okay. Now this is odd: a Christmas scene. Stockings hung from
the mantle over a blazing hearth. Seems like a lot of long descriptions
would fit that illustration.”
“You’re looking at the forest instead of the trees,” replied Bob. “In
this case one specific part of a tree: the Yule log. It’s simply a
homonym for ‘you’ll’.”
“Maybe so. Then we have ‘(B+)’. Again the parentheses around a
rebus element with the plus sign: it must mean it is not one word
broken into syllables. What is it: a blood type? A grade in school?
Maybe an intersection in an apiary?”
“Keep it simple, Sis: you were sort of right again the first time, if
you’d slow down and listen to yourself: it’s probably ‘be positive’, the
verb and adjective.”
Lulu dug into the jar, withdrew a pygmy mammoth. “I’ll take that,”
said Bob. “You’re stalling. And that’s what we have here: the word,
spelled out for us, ‘you’re’ followed by an airplane that must be
stalling—because it has no wings!”
“Oh, have your stupid cookie!” Lulu returned to her transcription.
“I’ll put down ‘no-wing’—oh, that must be ‘knowing’! The last one
is obvious: it’s a well.”
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