Read Online A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket - Free Book Online Page A

meant 'cold as ice"' Klaus said. "Okay, so we have ice and unbearable. So far this doesn't mean anything to me," Violet said. "Me neither," Klaus said. "But look at bluh next part. 'I know your children may not understand the sad life of a dowadger.' We don't have any children." "That's true," Violet said. "I'm not planning to have children until I am considerably older." "So why would Aunt Josephine say 'your children'? I think she meant 'you children.' And I looked up 'dowadger' in The Correct Spelling of Every English Word That Ever, Ever Existed.'" "Why?" Violet asked. "You already know it's a fancy word for widow." "It is a bluhncy word for widow," Klaus replied, "but it's spelled D-O-W-A-G-E-R. Aunt Josephine added an extra D." "Cold as ice" Violet said, counting on her fingers, "unbearable, you children, and an extra D in dowager. That's not much of a message, Klaus." "Let me finish," Klaus said. "I discovered even more grammbluhtical mistakes. When she wrote, 'or what would have leaded me to this desperate akt,' she meant 'what would have led me,' and the word 'act,' of course, is spelled with a C." "Coik!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "Thinking about all this is making me dizzy!" "Me too, Sunny," Violet said, lifting her sister up so she could sit on the table. "But let him finish." "There are just bluh more," Klaus said, holding up two fingers. "One, she calls Captain Sham 'a kind and honorable men,' when she should have said 'a kind and honorable man. ' And in the last sentence, Aunt Josephine wrote 'Please think of me kindly even though I'd done this terrible thing,' but according to the Handbook for Advanced Apostrophe Use, she should have written 'even though I've done this terrible thing.'" "But so what?" Violet asked. "What do all these mistakes mean?" Klaus smiled, and showed his sisters the two words he had written on the bottom of the note. "Curdled Cave," he read out loud. "Curdled veek?' Sunny asked, which meant "Curdled what?" "Curdled Cave," Klaus repeated. "If you take all the letters involved in the grammatical mistakes, that's what it spells. Look: C for ice instead of Ike. U for unbearable instead of inbearable. The extra R in your children instead of you children, and the extra D in dowager. L-E-D for led instead of leaded. C for act instead of akt. A for man instead of men. And V-E for I've instead of I'd. That spells CURDLED CAVE. Don't you see? Aunt Josephine knew she was making grammatical errors, and she knew we'd spot them. She was leaving us a message, and the message is Curdled-" A great gust of wind interrupted Klaus as it came through the shattered window and shook the library as if it were maracas, a word which describes rattling percussion instruments used in Latin American music. Everything rattled wildly around the library as the wind flew through it. Chairs and footstools flipped over and fell to the floor with their legs in the air. The bookshelves rattled so hard that some of the heaviest books in Aunt Josephine's collection spun off into puddles of rainwater on the floor. And the Baudelaire orphans were jerked violently to the ground as a streak of lightning flashed across the darkening sky. "Let's get out of here!" Violet shouted over the noise of the thunder, and grabbed her siblings by the hand. The wind was blowing so hard that the Baudelaires felt as if they were climbing an enormous hill instead of walking to the door of the library. The orphans were quite out of breath by the time they shut the library door behind them and stood shivering in the hallway. "Poor Aunt Josephine," Violet said. "Her library is wrecked." "But I need to go back in there," Klaus said, holding up the note. "We just found out what Aunt Josephine means by Curdled Cave, and we need a library to find out more." "Not that library," Violet pointed out. "All that library had were books on grammar. We need her books on Lake Lachrymose." "Why?" Klaus asked. "Because I'll bet you anything that's where Curdled