Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy) (F) Read Online Free PDF Page B

you simply don’t have enough on your hips to look good in a dirndl, understand?”
    I wanted to laugh, but somehow it just turned into a funny snort. “Oh, Lottie, I do love you!” I said, much more seriously than I meant to.

 
    5
    I’D EXPECTED ERNEST SPENCER to live in a bigger, more showy sort of house, and I was almost disappointed when the taxi stopped outside a comparatively ordinary sort of brick building in Redington Road. Traditional-style sash windows with white frames, several gables and bow windows, hidden behind tall hedges and walls, like most of the houses here. It had stopped raining, and the evening sun was bathing everything in golden light.
    “It looks very pretty,” whispered Mia in surprise as we followed Mom up the paved path to the front door, past flowering hydrangeas and box trees clipped into globe shapes.
    “So do you,” I whispered back. She did; she looked good enough to eat, with the cute braids on which Lottie had insisted, in exchange for the jeans that Mom, much to Lottie’s displeasure, had said we could wear. Probably, for one thing, because she wanted to wear her freshly ironed blue dress herself.
    Mom had pressed the doorbell, and we heard three melodious notes inside the house. “Please be nice , you two! And try to behave yourselves.”
    “You mean we’re not to throw our food about the way we usually do, belch, and tell improper jokes?” I blew a strand of hair away from my face. Lottie would have braided my hair too, but I had deliberately spent so long in the bathroom that there wasn’t enough time for it. “Honestly, Mom, if any of us has to be warned to be on our best behavior, it’s you!”
    “Exactly! We have perfect manners. Good evening, sir.” Mia bobbed a curtsy to a large stone statue beside the front door, a mixture of eagle (head down to rib cage) and lion (the rest of him), and rather stout into the bargain. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mia Silver, this is my sister Olivia Silver, and the one with the heavy frown looking more like a wicked stepmother is our real mom, Professor Ann Matthews. May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?”
    “This is Frightful Freddy, also known as Fat Freddy.” The front door had been opened, without a sound, by a tall boy a little older than me, wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt and jeans. I heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness Mom had put the silly tea dress on herself; I’d have felt totally ridiculous in it.
    “My grandparents gave him to my parents as a wedding present,” said the boy, patting Frightful Freddy’s beak. “Years ago, Dad wanted to move him to the far corner of the garden, but he weighs about a ton.”
    “Hello, Grayson!” Mom kissed the boy on both cheeks and then pointed to us. “These are my two mousies, Mia and Liv.”
    Mia and I hated being called mousies. It was as if Mom was letting everyone know that our front teeth were a little too large, which was possibly true.
    Grayson smiled at us. “Hi. Good to meet you.”
    “I bet,” I muttered under my breath.
    “You have lipstick on your cheek,” said Mia.
    Mom sighed, and Grayson looked a bit baffled. I couldn’t help noticing that he looked very like his father if you took no notice of his hair. The same broad shoulders, the same self-confident bearing, the same noncommittal politician’s smile. That was probably why he seemed so familiar to me. Admittedly he didn’t have ears as enormous as Ernest’s, but they might yet catch up with his father’s. I’d once read that ears and noses are the only parts of the body to go on growing into old age.
    Mom walked energetically past Grayson, as if she knew her way around the house very well. There was nothing we could do but follow her. Only, we stopped in the corridor, at a loss, because she had disappeared.
    Grayson closed the door behind us and passed the back of his hand over his cheeks. In fact, Mia had invented the lipstick bit.
    “Is there at least