Narnia The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

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CHAPTER ONE

LUCY LOOKS INTO A WARDROBE

 
ONCE  there  were  four  children  whose  names  were  Peter,  Susan,  Edmund  and  Lucy.  This
story  is  about  something  that  happened  to  them  when  they  were  sent  away  from  London  during  the
war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of
the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He
had  no  wife  and  he  lived  in  a  very  large  house  with  a  housekeeper  called  Mrs.  Macready  and  three
servants. (Their names were Ivy,  Margaret and Betty, but they do not come into the story much.) He
himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as on his
head, and they liked  him  almost at once; but on the  first evening when  he  came  out to  meet them at
the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and
Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing
his nose to hide it. As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first
night, the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over.  

"We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly splendid.
That old chap will let us do anything we like."  "I think he's an old dear," said Susan. "Oh, come off
it!"  said  Edmund,  who  was  tired  and  pretending  not  to  be  tired,  which  always  made  him  bad-
tempered. "Don't go on talking like that." "Like what?" said Susan; "and anyway, it's time you were in
bed." "Trying to talk like Mother," said Edmund. "And who are you to say when I'm to go to bed? Go
to bed yourself." 
 
"Hadn't we  all better  go to bed?" said Lucy.  "There's  sure to be a  row if  we're  heard talking
here." "No there won't," said Peter. "I tell  you this is the sort of house  where no one's going to mind
what we do. Anyway, they won't hear us. It's about ten minutes' walk from here down to that dining-
room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between."  "What's that noise?" said Lucy suddenly. It

was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and
rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy. 
 
"It's  only  a  bird,  silly,"  said  Edmund.  "It's  an  owl,"  said  Peter.  "This  is  going  to  be  a
wonderful place for birds. I shall go to bed now. I say, let's go and explore tomorrow. You might find
anything in a place like this. Did  you see those mountains as we came along? And the woods? There
might be eagles. 
There might be stags. There'll be hawks." "Badgers!" said Lucy.  "Foxes!" said Edmund.  "Rabbits!"
said  Susan.    But  when  next  morning  came  there  was  a  steady  rain  falling,  so  thick  that  when  you
looked out of the window  you could see neither the mountains nor the woods nor even the stream in
the garden. 

"Of course it would be raining!" said Edmund. They had just finished their breakfast with the
Professor  and  were  upstairs  in  the  room  he  had  set  apart  for  them  -  a  long,  low  room  with  two
windows looking out in one direction and two in another. 
 
"Do stop  grumbling, Ed," said Susan. "Ten to  one  it'll  clear  up in an  hour  or so.  And in the
meantime  we're  pretty  well  off.  There's  a  wireless  and  lots  of  books."  "Not  for  me"said  Peter;  "I'm
going  to  explore  in    the  house."  Everyone  agreed  to  this  and  that  was  how  the  adventures  began.  It
was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places.
The first 
few  doors  they  tried  led  only  into  spare  bedrooms,  as  everyone  had  expected  that  they  would;  but
soon they  came to a  very long room  full of  pictures and there they  found a suit of  armour; and after
that was a room all  hung with  green, with a harp in one  corner; and then came three steps down and
five steps up, and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out on to a balcony, and then a
whole  series  of  rooms  that  led  into  each  other  and  were  lined  with  books  -  most  of  them  very  old
books  and some bigger than  a Bible  in  a  church.  And  shortly after that they looked into a room that
was quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass in the door. There was
nothing else in the room at all except a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill.  


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