August-"A wonderful fact"

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon," wrote Charles Dickens, "that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."

Nicolas was mystified by his aunt's family. That constituted mystery number one. However, mystery number One was constituted of three separate, though by no means small* mysteries, all of whom were quite capable of independent thoughts and movement, which sometimes leads to surprising results.

For instance, one day Nick woke up to the fact that he had something furry pressed against his face, partially suffocating him, and something else furry pressed against his foot. The furry thing that was pressed against his foot was warm and vibrating. The furry thing that was pressed against his face was not.

Identifying the two said articles as mystery number Five and Six, Nick opened his eyes to find a pair of beady black eyes staring into his own, with the beak of the same creature pressed against his nose. He yelled and sat up. Immediately the mystery that was located at his feet protested with a loud yowling noise and shot out the door.
Nick suddenly found himself dealing not with mystery Five and Six, but mystery number Four, or his little cousin, who was grinning and holding her stuffed penguin. Both the eyes and the beak and the furriness belonged to the penguin who looked, now that Nick's heart rate was slowing to normal, very, very innocent.

"Ahhhuugghh," groaned Nick, rubbing his face with both hands. "How did you get in?" He was not accustomed to getting up before eight in the morning, even without the jet-lag, and his current disposition could be described with the following four words:

Groggy, groggy, annoyed, and groggy.

Therefore his usual painstaking politeness was a little lacking.

The mademoiselle did not notice that her older cousin was in the danger of yawning himself to death and smiled very innocently. "Through the door."

Nick stared at the door, which remained blissfully ignorant of his wrath. This is usually the only time when "ignorance is bliss" works out, and that is when you're dealing with inanimate objects.

The door stood, wide-open and innocent. All the innocence around him have slowly penetrated the fog in Nick's head. Nick could not be expected to be eloquent with his brains frying and sputtering in his head (even thought it wasn't five) in the morning, so he groaned again.

"Bonjour!" said his cousin, who was enjoying practicing her Français a little too much than what was good for her.

"Et tu..." mumbled Nick, who was going almost cross-eyed with his effort to figure out what time it was and how much sleep-deprivation was occurring. Needless to say, he was not up to his cousin's wittism. Also obvious was that being in America, for the time being at least, was not at all what he thought it would be.

For the time being at most Nicolas would like to know if this manner of waking up was going to be a frequent occurrence.
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thank you, Lucy :-)

funny, I always thought Anna was the Lady of the Lake. lol