The explanation is very clear and very simple, but we will not give it here. This first knot of “A Tangled Tale” offers attractions of its own, for like the dream Alice someone may exclaim, “A Knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it!”
The second problem or “Tale” is called Eligible Apartments, and deals with the adventures of one Balbus and his pupils, and contains two “Knots.” One is: “The Governor of —— wants to give a very small dinner party, and he means to ask his father’s brother-in-law, his brother’s father-in-law, and his brother-in-law’s father, and we’re to guess how many guests there will be.” The answer is one. Perhaps some ambitious person will go over the ground and prove it. The second knot deals with the Eligible Apartments which Balbus and his pupils were hunting. At the end of their walk they found themselves in a square.
“‘It is a Square!’ was Balbus’s first cry of delight as he gazed around him. ‘Beautiful! Beau-ti-ful! And rectangular!’ and as he plunged into Geometry he also plunged into funny conversations with the average English landlady, which we can better follow:
“‘Which there is one room, gentlemen,’ said the smiling landlady, ‘and a sweet room, too. As snug a little back room——’
“‘We will see it,’ said Balbus gloomily as they followed her in. ‘I knew how it would be! One room in each house! No view I suppose.’
“‘Which indeed there is, gentlemen!’ the landlady indignantly protested as she drew up the blind, and indicated the back garden.
“‘Cabbages, I perceive,’ said Balbus. ‘Well, they’re green at any rate.’
“‘Which the greens at the shops,’ their hostess explained, ‘are by no means dependable upon. Here you has them on the premises, and of the best.’
“‘Does the window open?’ was always Balbus’s first question in testing a lodging; and ‘Does the chimney smoke?’ his second. Satisfied on all points, he secured the refusal of the room, and moved on to the next house where they repeated the same performance, adding as an afterthought: ‘Does the cat scratch?’
“The landlady looked around suspiciously as if to make sure the cat was not listening. ‘I will not deceive you, gentlemen,’ she said, ‘it do scratch, but not without you pulls its whiskers. It’ll never do it,’ she repeated slowly, with a visible effort to recall the exact words between herself and the cat, ‘without you pulls its whiskers!’