The pleasure （quite o him） of being liked and, still more, of liking other people, was what kept Eustace from despair. For it was very dreary being a dragon. He shuddered whenever he caught sight of his own refle as he flew over a mountain lake. He hated the huge bat-like wings, the saw-edged ridge on his back, and the cruel, curved claws. He was almost afraid to be aloh himlf a he was ashamed to be with the others. On the evenings when he was not being ud as a hot-water bottle he would slink away from the camp and lie curled up like a sween the wood and the water. On such occasions, greatly to his surpri, Reepicheep was his most stant forter. The noble Mou would creep away from the merry circle at the camp fire and sit down by the dragon’s head, well to the windward to be out of the way of his smoky breath. There he would explain that what had happeo Eustace was a striking illustration of the turn of Fortune’s wheel, and that if he had Eustace at his own hou in Narnia （it was really a hole not a hou and the dragon’s head, let alone his body, would not have fitted in） he could show him more than a hundred examples of emperors, kings, dukes, knights, poets, lovers, astronomers, philosophers, and magis, who had fallen from prosperity into the most distressing circumstances, and of whom many had recovered and lived happily ever afterward. It did not, perhaps, em so very f at the time, but it was kindly meant aaever fot it.
But of cour what hung over everyone like a cloud was the problem of what to do with their dragohey were ready to sail. They tried not to talk of it when he was there, but he couldn’t help overhearing things like, “Would he fit all along one side of the deck? And we’d have to shift all the stores to the other side down below so as to balance,” or, “Would towing him be any good?” or “Would he be able to keep up by flying?” and （most often of all）, “But how are we to feed him?” And poor Eustace realized more and more that sihe first day he came on board he had been an unmitigated nuisand that he was now a greater nuisaill. And this ate into his mind, just as that bracelet ate into his f. He khat it only made it wor to tear at it with his great teeth, but he couldn’t help tearing now and then, especially on hot nights.