"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.
"Nothing there!" said Peter, and they all trooped out again - all except Lucy. She stayed
behind because she thought it would be worth while trying the door of the wardrobe, even
though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise it opened quite easily,
and two moth-balls dropped out.
