"Welcome back, children," Mr. Poe greeted them as they walked into his office. "Did things not work out at V.F.D. as planned? Would you rather we find you another village to live in for the "It takes a village to raise a child" theory?"

"No thank you, Mr. Poe," Klaus replied. "I think we're done with the whole "village" idea. But Violet and I talked it over and I think that we would rather try to find some friends of ours to live with. They live in the sky."

"Oh they do, do they?" Mr. Poe asked uneasily. "And what do you mean by, 'they live in the sky'?"

"Duncan and Isadora Quagmire and Hector are for the time being living in a self-sustaining hot-air mobile home. We're not positive where they are because they are floating above us somewhere," Violet said. She doubted that Mr. Poe was believing a word that she was saying, but oh well, she was telling the truth.

Mr. Poe looked at her with a doubtful expression on his face, confirming Violet's suspicions. "You could only live in the air for so long before you would run out of supplies, such as food and water. Do you really think that your friends could float in the air forever? There is not as much oxygen high up in the air, so is it really an intelligent idea to try to spend the rest of your life drifting around, wherever the wind takes you? You might not be able to survive for very long."

Violet considered that thought. "That could be true about the supplies," she said, "but Hector came up with a way to take everything they would need up with him."

They all sat thinking in silence until the phone jumped off the hook. It startled all of them out of their thoughts and Mr. Poe answered it quickly.

"Hello?" Mr. Poe said. "Oh, hello. No, I'm not really busy right now." Violet rolled her eyes. "I just have some children in my office, that's all. Oh, you don't have any children? And you're looking to adopt? Oh, well that's perfect, because these children are orphans. Would you be interested? Oh, how many? There are three of them, one age fourteen, one thirteen, and one two. Yes, they are very good children, very well behaved, obedient, and respectful. Well, you could meet them if you'd like. Okay, tomorrow at 4:00 sounds good. Wonderful. Goodbye." Mr. Poe turned to the children. "There is someone who is interested in meeting you tomorrow. They are looking to adopt."

"We know," Klaus replied without emotion, "we heard all about it. Tomorrow at 4:00 sharp, right?

Mr. Poe just nodded.

"We'll be here," Violet said. This received one shocked look from her brother. Klaus nudged her painfully. "We can give them a chance at the meeting," she whispered, "and if they're terrible, we don't have to live with them."

"I don't even want to give them a chance. I just want to live with you, Sunny, Duncan, Isadora, and Hector."

"I never said that I wanted to live with them either," Violet replied without remorse, "we can just meet them and then run away to create our invention and find the Quagmires and Hector."

"Okay," Klaus said in a defeated manner, "I guess that will work. I just don't want to take any chances of being adopted and getting into another dangerous situation with Count Olaf."

"I understand," Violet said. "Don't worry about it. Everything will work out fine. We'll just explain to Mr. Poe after the meeting that we don't think that that would be the right home for us, and we'll go to find the self-sustaining hot air mobile home."

"Okay," Klaus said, suddenly reassured.