Page 53 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City
P. 53

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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