The_Complete_Chronicles_of_Narnia_(volumes_1-7,_in_order_of_publication)

out besides spilling half of it on the way back. But they wouldn't see it. In the end they
refused point blank."
"Are they as stupid as all that?" asked Lucy.
The Magician sighed. "You wouldn't believe the troubles I've had with them. A few
months ago they were all for washing up the plates and knives before dinner: they said it
saved time afterwards. I've caught them planting boiled potatoes to save cooking them
when they were dug up. One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at
work moving all the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat. But I see you've
finished. Let's go and look at the Duffers now they can be looked at."
They went into another room which was full of polished instruments hard to understand -
such as Astrolabes, Orreries, Chronoscopes, Poesimeters, Choriambuses and Theodolinds
- and here, when they had come to the window, the Magician said, "There. There are your
Duffers."
"I don't see anybody," said Lucy. "And what are those mushroom things?"
The things she pointed at were dotted all over the level grass. They were certainly very
like mushrooms, but far too big - the stalks about three feet high and the umbrellas about
the same length from edge to edge. When she looked carefully she noticed too that the
stalks joined the umbrellas not in the middle but at one side which gave an unbalanced
look to them. And there was something - a sort of little bundle - lying on the grass at the
foot of each stalk. In fact the longer she gazed at them the less like mushrooms they
appeared. The umbrella part was not really round as she had thought at first. It was longer
than it was broad, and it widened at one end. There were a great many of them, fifty or
more.
The clock struck three.
Instantly a most extraordinary thing happened. Each of the "mushrooms" suddenly turned
upside-down. The little bundles which had lain at the bottom of the stalks were heads and
bodies. The stalks themselves were legs. But not two legs to each body. Each body had a
single thick leg right under it (not to one side like the leg of a one-legged man) and at the
end of it, a single enormous foot-a broadtoed foot with the toes curling up a little so that
it looked rather like a small canoe. She saw in a moment why they had looked like
mushrooms. They had been lying flat on their backs each with its single leg straight up in
the air and its enormous foot spread out above it. She learned afterwards that this was
their ordinary way of resting; for the foot kept off both rain and sun and for a Monopod to
lie under its own foot is almost as good as being in a tent.
"Oh, the funnies, the funnies," cried Lucy, bursting into laughter. "Did you make them
like that?"