A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Wide Window Read Free

trying to look excited. Klaus had never liked model trains, as they were a lot of work to put together and when you were done all you had was something that went around and around in endless circles. "And for little Sunny," Aunt Josephine said, reaching into the smallest trunk, which sat at the foot of the crib, "here is a rattle. See, Sunny, it makes a little noise." Sunny smiled at Aunt Josephine, showing all four of her sharp teeth, but her older siblings knew that Sunny despised rattles and the irritating sounds they made when you shook them. Sunny had been given a rattle when she was very small, and it was the only thing she was not sorry to lose in the enormous fire that had destroyed the Baudelaire home. "It is so generous of you," Violet said, "to give us all of these things." She was too polite to add that they weren't things they particularly liked. "Well, I am very happy to have you here," Aunt Josephine said. "I love grammar so much. I'm excited to be able to share my love of grammar with three nice children like yourselves. Well, I'll give you a few minutes to settle in and then we'll have some dinner. See you soon." "Aunt Josephine," Klaus asked, "what are these cans for?" "Those cans? For burglars, naturally," Aunt Josephine said, patting the bun of hair on top of her head. "You must be as frightened of burglars as I am. So every night, simply place these tin cans right by the door, so that when burglars come in, they'll trip over the cans and you'll wake up." "But what will we do then, when we're awake in a room with an angry burglar?" Violet asked. "I would prefer to sleep through a burglary." Aunt Josephine's eyes grew wide with fear. "Angry burglars?" she repeated. "Angry burglars? Why are you talking about angry burglars? Are you trying to make us all even more frightened than we already are?" "Of course not," Violet stuttered, not pointing out that Aunt Josephine was the one who had brought up the subject. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you." "Well, we'll say no more about it," Aunt Josephine said, looking nervously at the tin cans as if a burglar were tripping on them at that very minute. "I'll see you at the dinner table in a few minutes." Their new guardian shut the door, and the Baudelaire orphans listened to her footsteps padding down the hallway before they spoke. "Sunny can have Pretty Penny," Violet said, handing the doll to her sister. "The plastic is hard enough for chewing, I think." "And you can have the model trains, Violet," Klaus said. "Maybe you can take apart the engines and invent something." "But that leaves you with a rattle," Violet said. "That doesn't seem fair." "Schu!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something along the lines of "It's been a long time since anything in our lives has felt fair." The Baudelaires looked at one another with bitter smiles. Sunny was right. It wasn't fair that their parents had been taken away from them. It wasn't fair that the evil and revolting Count Olaf was pursuing them wherever they went, caring for nothing but their fortune. It wasn't fair that they moved from relative to relative, with terrible things happening at each of their new homes, as if the Baudelaires were riding on some horrible bus that stopped only at stations of unfairness and misery. And, of course, it certainly wasn't fair that Klaus only had a rattle to play with in his new home. "Aunt Josephine obviously worked very hard to prepare this room for us," Violet said sadly. "She seems to be a good-hearted person. We shouldn't complain, even to ourselves." "You're right," Klaus said, picking up his rattle and giving it a halfhearted little shake. "We shouldn't complain." "Twee!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something like "Both of you are right. We shouldn't complain." Klaus walked over to the window and looked out at the darkening landscape. The sun was beginning to set over the inky depths of Lake Lachrymose, and a cold evening wind was beginning to blow. Even from