Thank you for all your help! As you know, the dragon and the smoke came late to this chapter, so I'm glad you liked the change! As for the Library of Fossils, I'm not sure what you had in mind! I see the house as having sort of 3 floors, because well, I need 3 floors to work the way I want it to -- first floor with kitchen, dining room, library, ballroom, hall and most of them filled with giant blocks of plaster, bone, and rock, from Tendaguru and the Gobi (yes, this is back in chapter 2 of part 1!!). Second floor guest rooms, drawing room with big huge windows looking out on the lawns, with a back stair that connects to the family floor. Ahem, right, yeah. I sound like LARM here.
I definitely see Narnia falling outside the rigorous linear thinking of almost everyone -- you can see where it gets you when dealing with the mystery of Narnia in the Colonel's thought processes in the previous chapter. Thank you again, I could not have not managed it without you and Larm!
As for the stories Polly is telling Mary, well, whatever can be managed as Mary plies her with the gin. Refer to the Christmas story for likely effects and outcome.