Page "The Magician's Nephew" Paragraph 43

In the Lefay Fragment, Digory is born with the ability to speak to trees and animals, and lives with an Aunt Gertrude, a former school mistress with an officious, bullying nature, who has ended up as a Government minister after a lifetime of belligerent brow-beating of others.

Whenever his aunt is absent, Digory finds solace with the animals and trees, including a talking squirrel named Pattertwig.

Polly enters the story as a girl next door who is unable to understand the speech of non-human creatures.

She wants to build a raft to explore a stream which leads to an underground world.

Digory helps construct the raft, but ends up sawing a branch from a talking tree necessary to complete it, in order not to lose face with Polly.

This causes him to lose his supernatural powers of speech.

The following day he is visited by his godmother Mrs Lefay who knows that Digory has lost his abilities and gives him a card with the address of a furniture shop which she instructs him to visit.

At this point the fragment ends.