I agree with your answer, K, but I thought the word-play was that the word, 'to', cut the name Miln(e) as in A A Milne of 'Winnie the Pooh' fame. I don't get the 'ha', I'm afraid. Cheers
Ah! Having provided the above answer, I then went into the Crosswords sub-category where, in a similar thread, I found another couple of people agreed with my interpretation of the clue. In my experience, 'short' in crossword clues almost invariably means something knocked off the end rather than the start.