Page 49 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

“Let me see it,” said Bob. “The line reads, ‘Often is no use for
ringing the bell’. There: it is a poem. Second and fourth lines rhyme,
and each line has ten syllables. But they don’t scan very well; this isn’t
iambic pentameter.”
“So what?” Lulu grinned. “Uncle Bunster isn’t John Dunne or
Shakespeare.”
“And definitely not Edna St. Vincent Millay,” rejoined her brother.
“Enough! While your jaws are munching, my mind’s been
crunching. If this structure is consistent, it may help us going
forward. Line five begins with a pickaxe with ‘ing’. Unless it’s a
dastardly distorted ‘asking’, it must be ‘picking’.”
“I concur,” said Bob, swallowing. “The next item is indisputably a
brain or collectively ‘brains’, followed by the logogram known as an
ampersand, ergo ‘and’.”
“Well, ‘C’ plus this chess piece must be ‘seeking’.”
“And the word ‘help’ is followed by an ugly-looking insect under a
magnifying glass. Why? It must be very small. A tick or a mite. So it
could represent ‘might’.”
Lulu blinked. “But this line doesn’t end very nicely. A person
drinking through a straw plus a package of broccoli seed. What is
going on here? I’m stumped.”
“No problem,” said Bob. “The word is ‘succeed’.”

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