That was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms, as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures; and after that was a room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out on to a balcony. And shortly after that they looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe, the sort that has a looking-glass in the door.
"Nothing there!" Everybody rushed out but Lucy stayed because she thought it would be worthwhile trying the door of the wardrobe, even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise, it opened quite easily, and two mothballs dropped out.
Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up—mostly long fur coats. There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe... She took a step further in—then two or three steps, always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.
"This must be a simply vast wardrobe!" thought Lucy, going still further in. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. "Is that more mothball?" she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. "This is very queer," she said, and went on a step or two further.
... And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; ... A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.
