"Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did'nt know quite what to say.
    
    "But there was no time," said Susan. "Lucy had no time to have gone anywhere, even if 
there was such a place. She came running after us the very moment we were out of the 
room. It was less than minute, and she pretended to have been away for hours."
    
    "That is the very thing that makes her story so likely to be true," said the 
Professor. "If there really a door in this house that leads to some other world (and I 
should warn you that this is a very strange house, and even I know very little about 
it)-if, I say, she had got into another world, I should not be at a surprised to find 
that the other world had a separate time of its own; so that however long you stay there 
it would never take up any of our time. On the other hand, I don't think many girls of 
her age would invent that idea for themselves. If she had been pretending, she would have 
hidden for a reasonable time before coming out and telling her story."
    
    "But do you really mean, sir," said Peter, "that there could be other worlds-all over 
the place, just round the corner-like that?"
    
    "Nothing is more probable," said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and 
beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, "I wonder what they do teach them 
at these schools."
    
    "But what are we to do?" said Susan. She felt that the conversation was beginning to 
get off the point.
    
    "My dear young lady," said the Professor, suddenly looking up with a very sharp 
expression at both of them, "there is one plan which no one has yet suggested and which 
is well worth trying."
    
    "What's that?" said Susan.
    
    "We might all try minding our own business," said he. And that was the end of that 
conversation.
    
    After this things were a good deal better for Lucy. Peter saw to it that Edmund 
stopped jeering at her, and neither she nor anyone else felt inclined to talk about the 
wardrobe at all. It had become a rather alarming subject. And so for a time it looked as 
if all the adventures were coming to an end; but that was not to be.
    
    This house of the Professor's-which even he knew so little about-was so old and 
famous that people from all over England used to come and ask permission to see over it. 
It was the sort of house that is mentioned in guide books and even in histories; and well 
it might be, for all manner of stories were told about it, some of them even stranger 
than the one I am telling you now. And when parties of sightseers arrived and asked to 
see the house, the Professor always gave them permission, and Mrs Macready, the 
housekeeper, showed them round, telling them about the pictures and the armour, and the 
rare books in the library. Mrs Macready was not fond of children, and did not like to be 
interrupted when she was telling visitors all the things she knew. She had said to Susan 
and Peter almost on the first morning (along with a good many other instructions), "And 
please remember you're to keep out of the way whenever I'm taking a party over the house."
    
    "Just as if any of us would want to waste half the morning trailing round with a 
crowd of strange grown-ups!" said Edmund, and the other three thought the same. That was 
how the adventures began for the second time.
    
    A few mornings later Peter and Edmund were looking at the suit of armour and 
wondering if they could take it to bits when the two girls rushed into the room and said, 
"Look out! Here comes the Macready and a whole gang with her."
    
    "Sharp's the word," said Peter, and all four made off through the door at the far end 
of the room. But when they had got out into the Green Room and beyond it, into the 
Library, they suddenly heard voices ahead of them, and realized that Mrs Macready must be 
bringing her party of sightseers up the back stairs-instead of up the front stairs as 
they had expected. And after that-whether it was that they lost their heads, or that Mrs 
Macready was trying to catch them, or that some magic in the house had come to life and 
was chasing them into Narnia they seemed to find themselves being followed everywhere, 
until at last Susan said, "Oh bother those trippers! Here-let's get into the Wardrobe 
Room till they've passed. No one will follow us in there." But the moment they were 
inside they heard the voices in the passage-and then someone fumbling at the door-and 
then they saw the handle turning.
    
    "Quick!" said Peter, "there's nowhere else," and flung open the wardrobe. All four of 
them bundled inside it and sat there, panting, in the dark. Peter held the door closed 
but did not shut it; for, of course, he remembered, as every sensible person does, that 
you should never never shut yourself up in a wardrobe.
    
    
    
    CHAPTER SIX
    
    INTO THE FOREST
    
    "I wish the Macready would hurry up and take all these people away," said Susan 
presently, "I'm getting horribly cramped."
    
    "And what a filthy smell of camphor!" said Edmund.
    
    "I expect the pockets of these coats are full of it," said Susan, "to keep away the 
moths."
    
    "There's something sticking into my back," said Peter.
    
    "And isn't it cold?" said Susan.
    
    "Now that you mention it, it is cold," said Peter, "and hang it all, it's wet too. 
What's the matter with this place? I'm sitting on something wet. It's getting wetter 
every minute." He struggled to his feet.
    
    "Let's get out," said Edmund, "they've gone."