- Justice Strauss helps the Baudelaires shop for groceries and tells the children that they can come by any time and borrow books. The children are touched; they're not used to grown-ups being nice to them since their parents died.
- Violet, Klaus, and Sunny spend the rest of the day preparing dinner—noodles with puttanesca sauce and instant pudding.
- When Count Olaf comes home with his theater troupe, he demands that the orphans (this is how he addresses the Baudelaire children) serve them roast beef right now.
- But, of course, they haven't made roast beef, since Count Olaf never actually said he wanted that. When the kids point this out, Count Olaf holds Sunny in the air as if he might drop her.
- Just then, a few members of Count Olaf's theater troupe file into the kitchen… and boy, are they a freaky looking bunch.
- There's a bald man with a very long nose, two women with bright white powder on their faces, a man with hooks for hands, and another person who is obese and looks like neither a man nor a woman.
- Count Olaf ridicules the children a little more (while his associates talk about all the money the children have) and finally decides that the orphans can serve their lousy dinner. Gee, thanks.
- Before he leaves the room, the bald man with the long nose tells Violet that she should mind her manners or Count Olaf will rearrange her pretty face. Cheery, huh?
- The children serve dinner, and afterward, Count Olaf tells them they need to clean up the kitchen and go straight up to their beds.
- Klaus corrects him, turning that plural beds into the more accurate singular of bed.
- Count Olaf tells them that they should go buy another bed. They are rich, aren't they?
- Klaus points out (again) that the money can't be used until Violet comes of age. It's true.
- Count Olaf is enraged and smacks him across the cheek while his associates in the theater troupe cheer. Those villains…
- The children finish cleaning up and then cry themselves to sleep. Oh, the poor little orphans—someone get us a tissue, too.