THE MAGIS BOOK THE invisible people feasted their guests royally. It was very funny to see the plates and dishes ing to the table and not to see anyone carrying them. It would have been funny even if they had moved along level with the floor, as you would expect things to do in invisible hands. But they didnt. They progressed up the long dining-hall in a series of bounds or jumps. At the highest point of each jump a dish would be about fiftee up in the air; then it would e down and stop quite suddenly about three feet from the floor. When the dish tained anything like soup or stew the result was rather disastrous.
"Im beginning to feel very inquisitive about these people," whispered Eustaund. "Do you think theyre human at all? More like huge grasshoppers iant frogs, I should say.」
"It does look like it," said Edmund. "But dont put the idea of the grasshoppers into Lucys head. Shes not too keen on is; especially big ones.」
The meal would have been pleasanter if it had not been so exceedingly messy, and also if the versation had not sisted entirely of agreements. The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chaps hungry, he likes some victuals," etting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, youve e over the water.
Powerful wet stuff, aint it?" And Lucy could not help looking at the dark yawnirao the foot of the staircase - she could see it from where she sat - and w what she would find when she went up those stairs m. But it was a good meal
otherwise, with mushroom soup and boiled chis and hot boiled ham and gooseberries, redcurrants, curds, cream, milk, and mead. The others liked the mead but Eustace was sorry afterwards that he had drunk any.
When Lucy woke up m it was like waking up on the day of an examination or a day when yoing to the dentist. It was a lovely m with bees buzzing in and out of her open window and the lawn outside looking very like somewhere in England.
She got up and dressed and tried to talk a ordinarily at breakfast. Then, after being instructed by the Chief Voice about what she was to do upstairs, she bid goodbye to the others, said nothing, walked to the bottom of the stairs, and began going up them without once looking back.
It was quite light, that was one good thing. There was, indeed, a window straight ahead of her at the top of the first flight. As long as she was 9n that flight she could hear the tick-tock-tick-tock of a grandfather clo the hall below. Then she came to the landing and had to turn to her left up the flight; after that she couldnt hear the cloy more.
Now she had e to the top of the stairs. Lucy looked and saw a long, wide passage with a large window at the far end. Apparently the passage ran the whole length of the house. It was carved and panelled and carpeted and very many doors opened off it on each side. She stood still and couldhe squeak of a mouse, or the buzzing of a fly, or the swaying of a curtain, or anything - except the beating of her ow.
"The last doorway on the left," she said to herself. It did seem a bit hard that it should be the last. To reach it she would have to ast room after room. And in any room there might be the magi - asleep, or awake, or invisible, or even dead. But it wouldnt do to think about that. She set out on her jourhe carpet was so thick t