The_Complete_Chronicles_of_Narnia_(volumes_1-7,_in_order_of_publication)

And, if possible, she must not be allowed to go rampaging about London either. Digory
had not been in the drawingroom when she tried to "blast" Aunt Letty, but he had seen
her "blast" the gates at Charn: so he knew her terrible powers and did not know that she
had lost any of them by coming into our world. And he knew she meant to conquer our
world. At the present moment, as far as he could see, she might be blasting Buckingham
Palace or the Houses of Parliament: and it was almost certain that quite a number of
policemen had by now been reduced to little heaps of dust. And there didn't seem to be
anything he could do about that. "But the rings seem to work like magnets," thought
Digory. "If I can only touch her and then slip on my yellow, we shall both go into the
Wood between the Worlds. I wonder will she go all faint again there? Was that
something the place does to her, or was it only the shock of being pulled out of her own
world? But I suppose I'll have to risk that. And how am I to find the beast? I don't
suppose Aunt Letty would let me go out, not unless I said where I was going. And I
haven't got more than twopence. I'd need any amount of money for buses and trams if I
went looking all over London. Anyway, I haven't the faintest idea where to look. I
wonder if Uncle Andrew is still with her."
It seemed in the end that the only thing he could do was to wait and hope that Uncle
Andrew and the Witch would come back. If they did, he must rush out and get hold of the
Witch and put on his yellow Ring before she had a chance to get into the house. This
meant that he must watch the front door like a cat watching a mouse's hole; he dared not
leave his post for a moment. So he went into the dining-room and "glued his face" as they
say, to the window. It was a bow-window from which you could see the steps up to the
front door and see up and down the street, so that no one could reach the front door
without your knowing. "I wonder what Polly's doing?" thought Digory.
He wondered about this a good deal as the first slow half-hour ticked on. But you need
not wonder, for I am going to tell you. She had got home late for her dinner, with her
shoes and stockings very wet. And when they asked her where she had been and what on
earth she had been doing, she said she had been out with Digory Kirke. Under further
questioning she said she had got her feet wet in a pool of water, and that the pool was in a
wood. Asked where the wood was, she said she didn't know. Asked if it was in one of the
parks, she said truthfully enough that she supposed it might be a sort of park. From all of
this Polly's mother got the idea that Polly had gone off, without telling anyone, to some
part of London she didn't know, and gone into a strange park and amused herself jumping
into puddles. As a result she was told that she had been very naughty indeed and that she
wouldn't be allowed to play with "that Kirke boy" any more if anything of the sort ever
happened again. Then she was given dinner with all the nice parts left out and sent to bed
for two solid hours. It was a thing that happened to one quite often in those days.
So while Digory was staring out of the dining-room window, Polly was lying in bed, and
both were thinking how terribly slowly the time could go. I think, myself, I would rather
have been in Polly's position. She had only to wait for the end of her two hours: but every
few minutes Digory would hear a cab or a baker's van or a butcher's boy coming round
the corner and think "Here she comes", and then find it wasn't. And in between these