A Series of Unfortunate Events #4: The Miserable Mill

you never know until you try it out.

and so far each home had been a catastrophe, a word which here means “an utter disaster involving tragedy, deception, and Count Olaf.”

if Paltryville had been listed in a guidebook the only helpful hint about what to do when you got there would be: “Leave.”

A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out

using a phrase which here means “working with

ostentatiously—a word which here means “really, really”—horrendous,

hanging askew, a phrase which here means “tilted to one side

nefarious” here means “Baudelaire-hating

The Baudelaire orphans did not answer this question, because it seemed to them the answer was obvious. A fair deal, as everyone knows, is when both people give something of more or less equal value. If you were bored with playing with your chemistry set, and you gave it to your brother in exchange for his dollhouse, that would be a fair deal. If someone offered to smuggle me out of the country in her sailboat, in exchange for free tickets to an ice show, that would be a fair deal. But working for years in a lumbermill in exchange for the owner’s trying to keep Count Olaf away is an enormously unfair deal, and the three youngsters knew it.

Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have. For instance, if you wake up to the sound of twittering birds, and find yourself in an enormous canopy bed, with a butler standing next to you holding a breakfast of freshly made muffins and hand-squeezed orange juice on a silver tray, you will know that your day will be a splendid one. If you wake up to the sound of church bells, and find yourself in a fairly big regular bed, with a butler standing next to you holding a breakfast of hot tea and toast on a plate, you will know that your day will be O.K. And if you wake up to the sound of somebody banging two metal pots together, and find yourself in a small bunk bed, with a nasty foreman standing in the doorway holding no breakfast at all, you will know that your day will be horrid.