The Bilbao Looking Glass Read Online Free

your tote bag. Max can handle the suitcases. You remember Max Bittersohn. You met him at Dolph and Mary’s wedding reception.”
    “Yes, of course,” cried Appie, who clearly didn’t but wouldn’t have dreamed of saying so because she could never bear to hurt anyone’s feelings. “Are you a neighbor?”
    “Max is one of my boarders and a very good friend,” Sarah answered for him. “He’s staying in the carriage house.”
    Her aunt beamed. “Oh how nice. Then we have a man around to carry the trash to the dump. I’ve been wondering all the way out on the train how we were going to manage that.”
    By a supreme effort of will, Sarah refrained from grinding her teeth. “Aunt Appie, you don’t have to manage anything. You’re here strictly as a guest, and see that you remember it. You’re not to do one single thing except visit your friends and enjoy yourself. And Max is not the odd-job man, so don’t get any bright ideas about having him paint the house or build you a kayak.”
    “Sarah, you do get the oddest notions. Whatever would I do with a kayak? But then how do we manage the trash?”
    “Mr. Lomax comes with his truck and takes it away, the same as he’s always done. He also copes with the repairs, the grounds, and the garden. I’m going to be weeding the vegetables and Max will attend to his own business. We’ll all three be awfully busy, so you’ll have to amuse yourself with Miffy and the yacht club bunch. They’ll keep you hopping, never fear. Now come upstairs and let’s get you settled.”
    “Just let me fill my lungs with this wonderful air first. Um-aah!”
    There were two kinds of Kellings, the longs and the shorts. The tall ones inclined to oblong faces and eagle-beak noses. A few, like Sarah’s late husband, had managed to be handsome. Most did not.
    The short Kellings had squarish faces, straight little noses, and mouths that could be described, though never by Kellings themselves, as kissable. Their contours were gentle, ranging from agreeably curved to much too fat. Sarah herself was an unusually pleasant specimen of the shorts.
    Aunt Appie, also a Kelling-Kelling like Sarah since the Kellings tended to marry their distant cousins and keep the money in the family, was a long; one of the scraggy longs. As she stood snuffling up the salt air with arms outstretched and nostrils flaring, she might have inspired Cyrus Dallin’s “Appeal to the Great Spirit” if she’d had a horse under her and been wearing moccasins and breechclout instead of sensible oxfords and a green seersucker shirtwaist that actually did suggest a Girl Scout uniform.
    Having primed her pumps, Appie led the march into the house, lugging a bulging photograph album she intended to entertain Sarah with during the long, cozy evenings. Max, who’d had other ideas about how to beguile the moonlight hours, eyed the album without favor.
    “Your room isn’t ready because I wasn’t expecting you until Monday,” Sarah told her aunt. “Max and I just got here ourselves. I’m not even unpacked yet, and neither is he.”
    “Then we’ll all bustle around at once and get ourselves stowed away shipshape and Bristol fashion. What fun! Shoo, chickens. Old mother hen will build her own nest and lie in it with the greatest of ease. Oh, she floats through the air—”
    Even Max couldn’t help grinning as they left Appie thumping pillows and rattling drawers. “I see what you mean,” he murmured. “Is she always like that?”
    “Pretty much. Just be firm with her if she offers to cook you anything or starts organizing an expedition to study the tufted titmouse in its native habitat. Some of her old pals will be wanting her to go and stay with them, God willing, as soon as they find out she’s in town. You are going to drive us to Miffy’s, I hope? Aunt Appie would be heartbroken if she thought you were being left out of the general jollity.”
    “Will there be any?”
    “It’ll be deadly. The interesting people