“Is it winning, if you have so much help?” teased her father.
“Yes, it is. The contest is to get the answers to those hundred questions and send them in. It doesn’t matter where you get your answers. You don’t want to enter the contest yourself, do you, Mr. Van Reypen?”
“No, no, fair lady. I would but be thy humble knight, and render such poor assistance as I may.”
“All right, then; right after dinner, we’ll tackle that book of posers.”
And so, for a couple of hours that evening, Patty and Philip Van Reypen exerted the full force of their intellects to unravel the knotty tangles propounded by the little paper-covered book.
Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield tried for a time, but soon grew weary of the difficult game.
“Now, take this one,” said Patty to her colleague; “‘How do you swallow a door?’”
“Bolt it,” he replied, promptly. “That’s an old one.”
“I ought to have guessed that myself,” said Patty, “I’m so fond of slang.”
“‘Bolt it,’ isn’t exactly slang.”
“No, – I s’pose not. It’s just rude diction. Now, answer this. ‘The poor have two, the rich have none. Schoolboys have several, you have one.’”
“Well, that’s one of a class of puzzles to which the answer is usually some letter of the alphabet.”
“Oh, of course!” cried Patty, quickly; “it is O. There, I guessed that! Don’t you claim it!”
“Of course, you did! Now, you know this one about the headless man, don’t you? It’s a classic.”
“No, I don’t. I can’t see any sense to it at all.”
“Read it.”
So Patty read aloud:
“‘A headless man had a letter to write
It was read by one who had lost his sight,
The dumb repeated it, word for word,
And he who was deaf both listened and heard.’”
“And you don’t know that?” asked Philip.
“No; the conditions are impossible.”
“Oh, no, they’re not. They only seem so. The answer is, ‘Nothing.’ You see the headless man could write nothing, that’s naught, zero, or the letter O. Then the blind man, of course, could read nothing; the dumb man could repeat nothing; and the deaf man heard nothing.”
“Pooh! I don’t think that’s very clever.”
“Not modernly clever, but it’s a good example of the old-time enigmas.”
“Gracious! What a lot you know about puzzles. Have you always studied them.”
“Yes; I loved them as a child, and I love them still. I think this whole book is great fun. But we’ll strike some really difficult ones yet. Here’s one I’ve never seen before. I’ll read it, and see if we, either of us, get a clue.
“‘What is it men and women all despise,
Yet one and all alike as highly prize?
What kings possess not; yet full sure am I
That for that luxury they often sigh.
What never was for sale; yet any day
The thrifty housewife will give some away
The farmer needs it for his growing corn.
The tired husbandman delights to own.
The very thing for any sick friend’s room.
It coming, silent as Spring’s early bloom.
A great, soft, yielding thing, that no one fears.
A tiny thing, oft wet with mother’s tears.
A thing so holy that we often wear
It carefully hidden from the world’s cold stare.’”
“Well,” remarked Patty, complacently, as he finished reading, “I’ve guessed that.”
“You have! You bright little thing! I haven’t. Now, don’t tell me. Wait a minute! No, I can’t catch it. Tell me the answer.”
“Why, it’s An Old Shoe,” said Patty, laughing. “See how it all fits in.”
“Yes; it’s rattling clever. I like that one. Did you guess it as I read?”
“Yes; it seemed to dawn on me as you went along. They often do that, if I read them slowly. Now, here’s another old one. I’ll read, and you guess.
“‘If it be true, as Welshmen say,
Honour depends on pedigree,
Then stand by – clear the way —
And let me have fair play.
For, though you boast thro’ ages dark
Your pedigree from Noah’s ark,
I, too, was with him there.
For I was Adam, Adam I,
And I was Eve, and Eve was I,
In spite of wind and weather;
But mark me – Adam was not I,
Neither was Mrs. Adam I,
Unless they were together.
Suppose, then, Eve and Adam talking —
With all my heart, but if they’re walking
There ends all simile.
For, tho’ I’ve tongue and often talk,
And tho’ I’ve feet, yet when I walk
There is an end of me!
Not such an end but I have breath,
Therefore to such a kind of death
I have but small objection.
I may be Turk, I may be Jew,
And tho’ a Christian, yet ’tis true
I die by Resurrection!’”
“Oh, I know that one! It’s a very old one and it’s capital. The answer is A Bedfellow. See how clever it is; if I walk, it puts an end to me! and I die by resurrection! Oh, that’s a good one. But you see this one?”
The golden head and the close-cropped dark one bent over the book together and read these lines:
“I sit stern as a rock when I’m raising the wind,
But the storm once abated I’m gentle and kind;
I have kings at my feet who await but my nod
To kneel down in the dust, on the ground I have trod.
Though seen by the world, I am known but to few,
The Gentile deserts me, I am pork to the Jew.
I never have passed but one night in the dark,
And that was like Noah alone in the ark.
My weight is three pounds, my length is one mile,
And when you have guessed me you’ll say with a smile,
That my first and my last are the best of this isle.”
“Now that’s an old favourite with all puzzle-lovers,” said Philip, as they finished reading it. “And it has never been satisfactorily guessed. The usual answer is The Crown of England. But that doesn’t seem right to me. However, I know no other.”
“But