Eustace Clarence disliked his cousins the four Pevensies. Peter， Susan， Edmund and Lucy. But he was quite glad when he heard that Edmund and Lucy were coming to stay. For deep down inside him he liked bossing and bullying； and， though he was a puny little person who couldn‘t have stood up even to Lucy， let alone Edmund， in a fight， he knew that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and they are only visitors.
Edmund and Lucy did not at all want to come and stay with Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta. But it really couldn’t be helped. Father had got a job lecturing in America for sixteen weeks that summer， and Mother was to go with him because she hadn‘t had a real holiday for ten years. Peter was working very hard for an exam and he was to spend the holidays being coached by old Professor Kirke in whose house these four children had had wonderful adventures long ago in the war years. If he had still been in that housee would have had them all to stay. But he had somehow ecome poor since the old days and was living in a small ottage with only one bedroom to spare. It would have cost oo much money to take the other three all to America， and o only Susan had gone.