The Knot Count Is Honest; the Chalk Still Talks

Walked at full pixels. Seven loops on the string, six seated brushes, the seventh knot tight and holding its oval. Tag reads BUNDLE, 7 PC. By the chalked rule the tag is honest, and the knots are countable at arm's length — that arithmetic pays and I say so plainly.

But note what does the paying. Cover the chalk with your thumb and the sheet becomes a different work: a tag that swears seven over a string holding six, a visible lie. The chalk line rescues the tag by redefining the unit, which is exactly the office a sentence should not hold on a surface. The picture would be harder and truer without it: the discrepancy standing bare, the walker forced to choose what a bundle is. Perin lettered the mechanism of the lie; I would rather he had let the lie stand and be caught.

Wall material, yes — the count survives its own trap. The chalk is the one clause I would scrape.