'Wouldn't it be nice,' said Lucy, 'if you had a machine for drawing water. Then they could sing to you all day--if they chose.' 'If _I_ chose,' said the Great Sloth, yawning like a hippopotamus. 'I am sleepy. Go!' 'No,' said Lucy, and it was so long since the Great Sloth had heard that word that the shock of the sound almost killed its sleepiness. '_What_ did you say?' it asked, as if it could not believe its large ears. 'I said "No,"' said Lucy. 'I mean that you are so great and grand you have only to wish for anything and you get it.' 'Is that so?' said the Great Sloth dreamily and like an American. 'Yes,' said Lucy with firmness. 'You just say, "I wish I had a machine to draw up water for eight hours a day." That's the proper length for a working day. Father says so.' 'Say it all again, and slower,' said the creature. 'I didn't quite catch what you said.' Lucy repeated the words. 'If that's all. . . .' said the Great Sloth; 'now say it again, very slowly indeed.' Lucy did so and the Great Sloth repeated after her: 'I wish I had a machine to draw up water for eight hours a day.' 'Don't,' it said angrily, looking back over its shoulder into the feather-bedded room, 'don't, I say. Where are you shoving to? Who are you? What are you doing in my room? Come out of it.' Something did come out of the room, pushing the Great Sloth away from the door. And what came out was the vast feather-bed in enormous rolls and swellings and bulges. It was being pushed out by something so big and strong that it was stronger that the Great Sloth itself, and pushed that mountain of lazy sloth-flesh half across its own inner courtyard. Lucy retreated before its advancing bulk and its extreme rage. 'Push me out of my own feather-bedroom, would it?' said the Sloth, now hardly sleepy at all. 'You wait till I get hold of it, whatever it is.' The whole of the feather-bed was out in the courtyard now, and the Great Sloth climbed slowly back over it into its room to find out who had dared to outrage its Slothful Majesty. Lucy waited, breathless with hope and fear, as the Great Sloth blundered back into the inner room of its temple. It did not come out again. There was a silence, and then a creaking sound and the voice of the Great Sloth saying: 'No, no, no, I won't. Let go, I tell you.' Then more sounds of creaking and the sound of metal on metal. She crept to the arch and peeped round it. The room that had been full of feather-bed was now full of wheels and cogs and bands and screws and bars. It was full, in fact, of a large and complicated machine. And the handle of that machine was being turned by the Great Sloth itself. 'Let me go,' said the Great Sloth, gnashing its great teeth. 'I won't work!' 'You must,' said a purring voice from the heart of the machinery. 'You wished for me, and now you have to work me eight hours a day. It is the law'; it was the machine itself which spoke. 'I'll break you,' said the Sloth.