Lesson 10: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

 

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 armor; 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 onto 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 worthwhile 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.

Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up – mostly long fur coats. There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe. Soon she went further in and found that there was a second row of coats hanging up behind the first one. It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step further in – then two or three steps always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.

“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!” thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. “I wonder is that more mothballs?” she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. “This is very queer,” she said, and went on a step or two further.
Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. “Why, it is just like branches of trees!” exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.

Vocabulary:

 

Spare: Something that is is extra and not being used.

Example sentence: They had many spare bedrooms in their house.

 

Series: Same things that come one after the other.

Example sentence: Harry Potter is a series with seven books.

 

Troop: To walk somewhere in a large group.

Example sentence: We all trooped into the hall in silence.

 

Worthwhile:  Useful and enjoyable, despite needing a lot of effort.

Example sentence: It’s a difficult course but it’s very worthwhile.

 

Rub: To press your hand on something and move it backwards and forwards.

Example sentence: He rubbed himself dry with a towel.

 

Foolish: Silly and not wise.

Example sentence: He made a foolish mistake.

 

Bump: To hit against something by accident.

Example sentence: He kept falling over and bumping into things.

 

Crunch: The sound of something being crushed.

Example sentence: The crunch of dried leaves under our feet made me happy.

 

Prickly: To be covered in sharp points.

Example sentence: That is a prickly bush.

 

Ought: The correct or best thing to do. Should.

Example sentence: You ought to see a doctor.