The_Complete_Chronicles_of_Narnia_(volumes_1-7,_in_order_of_publication)

entered, but it was of course a magic table, and at a word from the old man the tablecloth,
silver, plates, glasses and food appeared.
"I hope that is-what you would like," said he. "I have tried to give you food more like the
food of your own land than perhaps you have had lately."
"It's lovely," said Lucy, and so it was; an omelette, piping hot, cold lamb and green peas,
a strawberry ice, lemonsquash to drink with the meal and a cup of chocolate to follow.
But the magician himself drank only wine and ate only bread. There was nothing
alarming about him, and Lucy and he were soon chatting away like old friends.
"When will the spell work?" asked Lucy. "Will the Duffers be visible again at once?"
"Oh yes, they're visible now. But they're probably all asleep still; they always take a rest
in the middle of the day."
"And now that they're visible, are you going to let them off being ugly? Will you make
them as they were before?"
"Well, that's rather a delicate question," said the Magician. "You see, it's only they who
think they were so nice to look at before. They say they've been uglified, but that isn't
what I called it. Many people might say the change was for the better."
"Are they awfully conceited?"
"They are. Or at least the Chief Duffer is, and he's taught all the rest to be. They always
believe every word he says."
"We'd noticed that," said Lucy.
"Yes - we'd get on better without him, in a way. Of course I could turn him into
something else, or even put a spell on him which would make them not believe a word he
said. But I don't like to do that. It's better for them to admire him than to admire nobody."
"Don't they admire you?" asked Lucy.
"Oh, not me," said the Magician. "They wouldn't admire me."
"What was it you uglified them for - I mean, what they call uglified?"
"Well, they wouldn't do what they were told. Their work is to mind the garden and raise
food - not for me, as they imagine, but for themselves. They wouldn't do it at all if I didn't
make them. And of course for a garden you want water. There is a beautiful spring about
half a mile away up the hill. And from that spring there flows a stream which comes right
past the garden. All I asked them to do was to take their water from the stream instead of
trudging up to the spring with their buckets two or three times a day and tiring themselves