“Tikko,” Sunny agreed, and followed her siblings into Violet’s room. Violet looked around the bedroom and remembered how excited she had been to move into it just a short while ago. Now, the enormous window with the view of the snake-shaped hedges seemed depressing rather than inspiring, and the blank pages tacked to her wall, rather than being convenient, seemed only to remind her of how anxious she was.

“I see you haven’t worked much on your inventions,” Klaus said gently. “I haven’t been reading at all. When Count Olaf is around, it sure puts a damper on the imagination.”

“Not always,” Violet pointed out. “When we lived with him, you read all about nuptial law to find out about his plan, and I invented a grappling hook to put a stop to it.”

“In this situation, though,” Klaus said glumly, “we don’t even know what Count Olaf is up to. How can we formulate a plan if we don’t know his plan?”

“Well, let’s try to hash this out,” Violet said, using an expression which here means “talk about something at length until we completely understand it.” “Count Olaf, calling himself Stephano, has come to this house in disguise and is obviously after the Baudelaire fortune.”

“And,” Klaus continued, “once he gets his hands on it, he plans to kill us.”

“Tadu,” Sunny murmured solemnly, which probably meant something along the lines of “It’s a loathsome situation in which we find ourselves.”

“However,” Violet said, “if he harms us, there’s no way he can get to our fortune. That’s why he tried to marry me last time.”

“Thank God that didn’t work,” Klaus said, shivering. “Then Count Olaf would be my brother-in-law. But this time he’s not planning to marry you. He said something about an accident.”

“And about heading to a location where crimes are more difficult to trace,” Violet said, remembering his words. “That must mean Peru. But Stephano isn’t going to Peru. Uncle Monty tore up his ticket.”

“Doog!” Sunny shrieked, in a generic cry of frustration, and pounded her little fist on the floor. The word “generic” here means

“when one is unable to think of anything else to say,” and Sunny was not alone in this. Violet and Klaus were of course too old to say things like “Doog!” but they wished they weren’t. They wished they could figure out Count Olaf’s plan. They wished their situation didn’t seem as mysterious and hopeless as it did, and they wished they were young enough to simply shriek

“Doog!” and pound their fists on the floor.

And most of all, of course, they wished that their parents were alive and that the Baudelaires were all safe in the home where they had been born.