The Silver Chair Read Online Free PDF Page B

old man like that. It’s—it’s frightful.”
    “Why, what harm does it do you?”
    “Oh, you don’t understand. Now that I come to think of it, you couldn’t. I didn’t tell you that this world has a different time from ours.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “The time you spend here doesn’t take up anyof our time. Do you see? I mean, however long we spend here, we shall still get back to Experiment House at the moment we left it—”
    “That won’t be much fun—”
    “Oh, dry up! Don’t keep interrupting. And when you’re back in England—in our world—you can’t tell how time is going here. It might be any number of years in Narnia while we’re having one year at home. The Pevensies explained it all to me, but, like a fool, I forgot about it. And now apparently it’s been about seventy years—Narnian years—since I was here last. Do you see now? And I come back and find Caspian an old, old man.”
    “Then the King was an old friend of yours!” said Jill. A horrid thought had struck her.
    “I should jolly well think he was,” said Scrubb miserably. “About as good a friend as a chap could have. And last time he was only a few years older than me. And to see that old man with a white beard, and to remember Caspian as he was the morning we captured the Lone Islands, or in the fight with the Sea Serpent—oh, it’s frightful. It’s worse than coming back and finding him dead.”
    “Oh, shut up,” said Jill impatiently. “It’s far worse than you think. We’ve muffed the first Sign.” Of course Scrubb did not understand this. Then Jill told him about her conversation with Aslan and the four signs and the task of findingthe lost prince which had been laid upon them.
    “So you see,” she wound up, “you did see an old friend, just as Aslan said, and you ought to have gone and spoken to him at once. And now you haven’t, and everything is going wrong from the very beginning.”
    “But how was I to know?” said Scrubb.
    “If you’d only listened to me when I tried to tell you, we’d be all right,” said Jill.
    “Yes, and if you hadn’t played the fool on the edge of that cliff and jolly nearly murdered me—all right, I said murder , and I’ll say it again as often as I like, so keep your hair on—we’d have come together and both known what to do.”
    “I suppose he was the very first person you saw?” said Jill. “You must have been here hours before me. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone else first?”
    “I was only here about a minute before you,” said Scrubb. “He must have blown you quicker than me. Making up for lost time: the time you lost.”
    “Don’t be a perfect beast, Scrubb,” said Jill. “Hallo! What’s that?”
    It was the castle bell ringing for supper, and thus what looked like turning into a first-rate quarrel was happily cut short. Both had a good appetite by this time.
    Supper in the great hall of the castle was the most splendid thing either of them had ever seen;for though Eustace had been in that world before, he had spent his whole visit at sea and knew nothing of the glory and courtesy of the Narnians at home in their own land. The banners hung from the roof, and each course came in with trumpeters and kettledrums. There were soups that would make your mouth water to think of, and the lovely fishes called pavenders, and venison and peacock and pies, and ices and jellies and fruit and nuts, and all manner of wines and fruit drinks. Even Eustace cheered up and admitted that it was “something like.” And when all the serious eating and drinking was over, a blind poet came forward and struck up the grand old tale of Prince Cor and Aravis and the horse Bree, which is called The Horse and His Boy and tells of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Cair Paravel. (I haven’t time to tell it now, though it is well worth hearing.)
    When they were dragging themselves