Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.

“Oh God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!' Thanks to our labours, this w…”

“We call a cancer bad, they would say, because it kills a man; but you might jus…”

“But when day came, with a sprinkle of rain, and he looked about him and saw on …”

“Though no one would want to be sold as a slave, it is perhaps even more galling…”