shoes, and no one could have looked at them for a moment
without seeing what sort of feet they were made for, for each shoe had
five holes in it for the drakling's five claws. And there were fifty
pairs because the drakling took after his mother, and had a hundred
feet--no more and no less. He was the kind called _Draco centipedis_ in
the learned books.

Edmund was a good deal frightened, but he remembered the grim expression
of the cockatrice's eye, and the fixed determination of his snore still
rang in his ears, in spite of the snoring of the drakling, which was, in
itself, considerable. He screwed up his courage, flung the door open,
and called out: "Hello, you drakling. Get out of bed this minute."

The drakling stopped snoring and said sleepily: "It ain't time yet."

"Your mother says you are to, anyhow; and look sharp about it, what's
more," said Edmund, gaining courage from the fact that the drakling had
not yet eaten him.

The drakling sighed, and Edmund could hear it getting out of bed. The
next moment it began to come out of its room and to put on its shoes. It
was not nearly so big as its mother; only about the size of a Baptist
chapel.

"Hurry up," said Edmund, as it fumbled clumsily with the seventeenth
shoe.

"Mother said I was never to go out without my shoes," said the
drakling; so Edmund had to help it to put them on. It took some time,
and was not a comfortable occupation.

At last the drakling said it was ready, and Edmund, who had forgotten to
be frightened, said, "Come on then," and they went back to the
cockatrice.

The cave was rather narrow for the drakling, but it made itself thin, as
you may see a fat worm do when it wants to get through a narrow crack in
a piece of hard earth.

"Here it is," said Edmund, and the cockatrice woke up at once and asked
the drakling very politely to sit down and wait. "Your mother will be
here presently," said the cockatrice, stirring up its fire.

The drakling sat down and waited, but it watched the fire with hungry
eyes.

"I beg your pardon," it said at last, "but I am always accustomed to
having a little basin of fire as soon as I get up, and I feel rather
faint. Might I?"

It reached out a claw toward the cockatrice's basin.

"Certainly not," said the cockatrice sharply. "Where were you brought
up? Did they never teach you that 'we must not ask for all we see'? Eh?"

"I beg your pardon," said the drakling humbly, "but I am really _very_
hungr