“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; ae, 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 magi himlf drank only wine and ate only bread. There was nothing alarming about him, and Lud 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 Magi. “You e, it’s only they who think they were so o look at before. They say they’ve been uglified, but that isn’t what I called it. Many people might say the ge was for the better.”
“Are they awfully ceited?”
“They are. Or at least the Chief Duffer is, aaught all the rest to be. They always believe every word he says.”
“We’d noticed that,” said Lucy.
“Yes-we’d get oer without him, in a way. Of cour I could turn him into something el, 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 Magi. “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 rai food—not for me, as they imagine, but for themlves. They wouldn’t do it at all if I didn’t make them. And of cour farden you want water. There is a beautiful spring about half a mile a the hill. And from that spring there flows a stream whies right past the garden. All I asked them to do was to take their water from the stream instead ing up to the spring with their buckets two or three times a day and tiring themlves out besides spilling half of it on the way back. But they would. In the end they refud point blank.”
“Are they as stupid as all that?” asked Lucy.
The Magi 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 dihey said it saved time afterward. 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 ohought of moving the cat. But I e you’ve finished. Let’s go and look at the Duffers now they be looked at.”