Autograph

today I have been scanning pages of my mothers old (from the 40s) autograph book, she is going to use some of the entries to make a birthday book for her cousin and friend Helen on her 80th birthday. Some of the entries were so faint, I have had to photograph them as the scanner wasn't picking them up very well. This is one of them.

I found it strangely moving, seeing this entry from a time when she was still a child, young enough for her father to sign himself 'Daddy'. He died when I was a toddler, so I never knew him.

I can't figure out the verse, either. It must go:
A house without a roof, dear, a ship without a sail
Is really not so uncomfortable as a shirt withou a ...what?