In H. G. Wells's short story “The Magic Shop,” the narrator and his young son, Gip, go on quite an adventure when they enter into a mysterious magic shop. They witness all kinds of magic performed by the shop's strange proprietor, and they are finally led into the showroom, where Gip and his father see many wonders.

Gip's father, however, becomes more and more concerned: the shop assistant does things like make his own nose grow, and the proprietor knows Gip's full name and address. The proprietor keeps on insisting that it is genuine magic—“the real thing.” It is, in fact, becoming rather too real for the narrator.

The narrator reaches his limit when the proprietor makes Gip disappear. The narrator leaps through a door and finds himself outside on Regent Street. Gip is standing nearby with four parcels in his arms. The narrator turns around to look back to the magic shop, but it is not there. He can see no door at all, only a pilaster between two other shops.

At this point, the narrator is extremely bewildered, in “mental tumult,” he calls it, and he does the only thing he can think of doing. He calls a cab, gets in with his son, manages to recall his address, and goes home. He is somewhat concerned that he left the shop without paying for the items in the four parcels (which include toy soldiers and a live kitten), but he eventually decides that since the proprietor knows their address, he will send along the bill in his own time.