This post wound up looking more like a bunch of disconnected thoughts thrown together in no order…and it was!

Well, “snooty” might apply (to the house and the woman’s name), as Doc surmised, but “oddball” also seems appropriate. Take that plate of stepped-on biscuits, I mean, scones. Who piles them on a plate like that, anyway? That’s hardly the posh thing to do. And not very hygienic, if you are inviting visitors to simply grab one out of the pile! Still, if you are going to serve them, where is the clotted cream and marmalade? I mean, really! Well, let’s not get too much into the pronunciation of “scones”, as both versions are acceptable.

But I’d bet Violet pronounces it “scahns”, as it sounds upper class. This is where one can appreciate Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic strip, where Kelly sometimes used typography to suggest the speaker’s intonation and accent. You see that, Jules!?

Today’s strip also nicely illustrates a contextual use of color: If I was looking at this strip in my local paper which publishes the comics in black & white, I would not see the violet hues used in Cheshire’s office, thus missing the visual pun.

Wonder which one initiated the left-handed handshake? Usually only done for somebody with a bum right arm. But maybe this was purely a design choice. The nicely flowing line from Cherry to Violet would look awkward if they shook right-handed.

Back to the story: While an Eastern Chipmunk contentedly munches away, Cherry mostly keeps her cool and gets down to business with Violet. Story-wise, it’s a decently-paced sequence, with a polite overture thrown in for the sake of atmosphere.

As in her first Mark Trail outing, Jules juggles two concurrent, but different, story lines. Rather difficult to do in a daily comic strip. The trick, I believe, is in the timing and complexity: Not too many days for each story segment, and not too much action; else we get lost in details or forgot the other story. Keep your scorecards at the ready!