Page 53 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City
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Bob eyed his twin’s notes. “‘Of superior spots in which to look’.”
He withdrew an Arabian gazelle from the repository. “An
herbivore—and the first word of line nine is ‘cabbage’!”
“Wrong edible flora, my impetuous sibling. ‘Cabbage’ means
nothing but ‘cabbage’. But ‘lettuce’ yields a bigger crop: ‘Let us’. And
that fits with the letter ‘B’ coming up behind it. Or were you
proposing ‘cabbage be’?”
“Aren’t there bees that live in cabbages?” Bob was upbeat,
unwilling to let his sister score against him. But she didn’t respond.
He severed the ungulate mid-ribs and studied the rebus. “And look at
what’s next: a hot dog! Don’t hot dogs and cabbage go together?
Maybe the whole thing means ‘delicatessen’ or ‘picnic’. Nah, just
kidding, Lulu: I can see that this really is a frankfurter. Given Uncle’s
penchant for punning, this could be two words in one picture: ‘frank’
and ‘further’.”
“I do believe you’re right,” said Lulu, impressed despite herself.
“Next is a weather vane, evidently equivalent to ‘vain’, and another
compound: a screw plus a can of herrings and the letter ‘E’. Now,
what can that be? ‘Scrufishy’? ‘Screwcanny’?”
Bob shook his head. “Don’t be silly! Herring come from the North
Atlantic, including England—where that container is called a ‘tin’.
The word is ‘scrutiny’.”
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