“Don’t you see that r?” asked Bess, holding up her slate and giving a bayonet thrust to the offending letter.
“Yes; but what has that r, all alone by itself, to do with it?”
“Why, it’s my proof. You see I write down my word, and rub out each letter of it as I use it in picking out my new words, so if none are left, my anagram is complete.”
“So you found an extra r, instead of an extra axe, in your way? Well, that is rather trying; but then there are plenty of more words, and it isn’t much work to get them out. You have a capital way. Besides, that wouldn’t have been so very good a one. You know ‘Aunt Sue' says the word and the sentence should bear some relation to each other. Now, if Artaxerxes had been a famous wood-cutter instead of a Persian king, it might have been too bad.”
“But wasn’t he a warrior, too and mightn’t they be battle-axes?”
Mary admitted the force of this, with a smile, as she went on to say:
“When we see such anagrams as ‘astronomers—no more stars,’ and ‘parishioners—I hire parsons,’ there is a certain sense of fitness that produces all the pleasure I can find in an anagram.”
“I know they’re better; but, then, not half of them do mean anything. I never could make such ones.”
“I should try, if I made them out at all, to have them just right. You must remember it takes some patience to get them, as well as to make them. You want the satisfaction of feeling paid when you’re through.”