Silver Chair

THE SILVER CHAIR

by C.S. Lewis

First published 1953

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CHAPTER ONE

BEHIND THE GYM

IT was a dull autumn day and Jill Pole was crying behind the gym.

She was crying because they had been bullying her. This is not

going to be

a school story, so I shall say as little as possible about Jill's

school,

which is not a pleasant subject. It was "Co-educational," a school

for both

boys and girls, what used to be called a "mixed" school; some said

it was

not nearly so mixed as the minds of the people who ran it. These

people had

the idea that boys and girls should be allowed to do what they

liked. And

unfortunately what ten or fifteen of the biggest boys and girls

liked best

was bullying the others. All sorts of things, horrid things, went

on which

at an ordinary school would have been found out and stopped in

half a term;

but at this school they weren't. Or even if they were, the people

who did

them were not expelled or punished. The Head said they were

interesting

psychological cases and sent for them and talked to them for

hours. And if

you knew the right sort of things to say to the Head, the main

result was

that you became rather a favourite than otherwise.

That was why Jill Pole was crying on that dull autumn day on the

damp

little path which runs between the back of the gym and the

shrubbery. And

she hadn't nearly finished her cry when a boy came round the

corner of the

gym whistling, with his hands in his pockets. He nearly ran into

her.

"Can't you look where you're going?" said Jill Pole.

"All right," said the boy, "you needn't start -" and then he

noticed her

face. "I say, Pole," he said, "what's up?"

Jill only made faces; the sort you make when you're trying to say

something

but find that if you speak you'll start crying again.

"It's Them, I suppose - as usual," said the boy grimly, digging...