Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

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Pe­ter Pan in Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens

by J. M. Bar­rie

May, 1998 [Etext #1332]

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PE­TER PAN IN KENS­ING­TON GAR­DENS By J. M. BAR­RIE

CON­TENTS

Pe­ter Pan The Thrush’s Nest The Lit­tle House Lock-​Out Time

Pe­ter Pan

If you ask your moth­er whether she knew about Pe­ter Pan when she was a lit­tle girl she will say, “Why, of course, I did, child,” and if you ask her whether he rode on a goat in those days she will say, “What a fool­ish ques­tion to ask, cer­tain­ly he did.” Then if you ask your grand­moth­er whether she knew about Pe­ter Pan when she was a girl, she al­so says, “Why, of course, I did, child,” but if you ask her whether he rode on a goat in those days, she says she nev­er heard of his hav­ing a goat. Per­haps she has for­got­ten, just as she some­times for­gets your name and calls you Mil­dred, which is your moth­er’s name. Still, she could hard­ly for­get such an im­por­tant thing as the goat. There­fore there was no goat when your grand­moth­er was a lit­tle girl. This shows that, in telling the sto­ry of Pe­ter Pan, to be­gin with the goat (as most peo­ple do) is as sil­ly as to put on your jack­et be­fore your vest.

Of course, it al­so shows that Pe­ter is ev­er so old, but he is re­al­ly al­ways the same age, so that does not mat­ter in the least. His age is one week, and though he was born so long ago he has nev­er had a birth­day, nor is there the slight­est chance of his ev­er hav­ing one. The rea­son is that he es­caped from be­ing a hu­man when he was sev­en days’ old; he es­caped by the win­dow and flew back to the Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens.

If you think he was the on­ly ba­by who ev­er want­ed to es­cape, it shows how com­plete­ly you have for­got­ten your own young days. When David heard this sto­ry first he was quite cer­tain that he had nev­er tried to es­cape, but I told him to think back hard, press­ing his hands to his tem­ples, and when he had done this hard, and even hard­er, he dis­tinct­ly re­mem­bered a youth­ful de­sire to re­turn to the tree-​tops, and with that mem­ory came oth­ers, as that he had lain in bed plan­ning to es­cape as soon as his moth­er was asleep, and how she had once caught him half-​way up the chim­ney. All chil­dren could have such rec­ol­lec­tions if they would press their hands hard to their tem­ples, for, hav­ing been birds be­fore they were hu­man, they are nat­ural­ly a lit­tle wild dur­ing the first few weeks, and very itchy at the shoul­ders, where their wings used to be. So David tells me.

I ought to men­tion here that the fol­low­ing is our way with a sto­ry: First, I tell it to him, and then he tells it to me, the un­der­stand­ing be­ing that it is quite a dif­fer­ent sto­ry; and then I retell it with his ad­di­tions, and so we go on un­til no one could say whether it is more his sto­ry or mine. In this sto­ry of Pe­ter Pan, for in­stance, the bald nar­ra­tive and most of the moral re­flec­tions are mine, though not all, for this boy can be a stern moral­ist, but the in­ter­est­ing bits about the ways and cus­toms of ba­bies in the bird-​stage are most­ly rem­inis­cences of David’s, re­called by press­ing his hands to his tem­ples and think­ing hard.

Well, Pe­ter Pan got out by the win­dow, which had no bars. Stand­ing on the ledge he could see trees far away, which were doubt­less the Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens, and the mo­ment he saw them he en­tire­ly for­got that he was now a lit­tle boy in a night­gown, and away he flew, right over the hous­es to the Gar­dens. It is won­der­ful that he could fly with­out wings, but the place itched tremen­dous­ly, and, per­haps we could all fly if we were as dead-​con­fi­dent-​sure of our ca­pac­ity to do it as was bold Pe­ter Pan that evening.

He alight­ed gai­ly on the open sward, be­tween the Ba­by’s Palace and the Ser­pen­tine, and the first thing he did was to lie on his back and kick. He was quite un­aware al­ready that he had ev­er been hu­man, and thought he was a bird, even in ap­pear­ance, just the same as in his ear­ly days, and when he tried to catch a fly he did not un­der­stand that the rea­son he missed it was be­cause he had at­tempt­ed to seize it with his hand, which, of course, a bird nev­er does. He saw, how­ev­er, that it must be past Lock-​out Time, for there were a good many fairies about, all too busy to no­tice him; they were get­ting break­fast ready, milk­ing their cows, draw­ing wa­ter, and so on, and the sight of the wa­ter-​pails made him thirsty, so he flew over to the Round Pond to have a drink. He stooped, and dipped his beak in the pond; he thought it was his beak, but, of course, it was on­ly his nose, and, there­fore, very lit­tle wa­ter came up, and that not so re­fresh­ing as usu­al, so next he tried a pud­dle, and he fell flop in­to it. When a re­al bird falls in flop, he spreads out his feath­ers and pecks them dry, but Pe­ter could not re­mem­ber what was the thing to do, and he de­cid­ed, rather sulk­ily, to go to sleep on the weep­ing beech in the Ba­by Walk.

At first he found some dif­fi­cul­ty in bal­anc­ing him­self on a branch, but present­ly he re­mem­bered the way, and fell asleep. He awoke long be­fore morn­ing, shiv­er­ing, and say­ing to him­self, “I nev­er was out in such a cold night;” he had re­al­ly been out in cold­er nights when he was a bird, but, of course, as ev­ery­body knows, what seems a warm night to a bird is a cold night to a boy in a night­gown. Pe­ter al­so felt strange­ly un­com­fort­able, as if his head was stuffy, he heard loud nois­es that made him look round sharply, though they were re­al­ly him­self sneez­ing. There was some­thing he want­ed very much, but, though he knew he want­ed it, he could not think what it was. What he want­ed so much was his moth­er to blow his nose, but that nev­er struck him, so he de­cid­ed to ap­peal to the fairies for en­light­en­ment. They are re­put­ed to know a good deal.

There were two of them strolling along the Ba­by Walk, with their arms round each oth­er’s waists, and he hopped down to ad­dress them. The fairies have their tiffs with the birds, but they usu­al­ly give a civ­il an­swer to a civ­il ques­tion, and he was quite an­gry when these two ran away the mo­ment they saw him. An­oth­er was lolling on a gar­den-​chair, read­ing a postage-​stamp which some hu­man had let fall, and when he heard Pe­ter’s voice he popped in alarm be­hind a tulip.

To Pe­ter’s be­wil­der­ment he dis­cov­ered that ev­ery fairy he met fled from him. A band of work­men, who were saw­ing down a toad­stool, rushed away, leav­ing their tools be­hind them. A milk­maid turned her pail up­side down and hid in it. Soon the Gar­dens were in an up­roar. Crowds of fairies were run­ning this way and that, ask­ing each oth­er stout­ly, who was afraid, lights were ex­tin­guished, doors bar­ri­cad­ed, and from the grounds of Queen Mab’s palace came the rubadub of drums, show­ing that the roy­al guard had been called out.

A reg­iment of Lancers came charg­ing down the Broad Walk, armed with hol­ly-​leaves, with which they jog the en­emy hor­ri­bly in pass­ing. Pe­ter heard the lit­tle peo­ple cry­ing ev­ery­where that there was a hu­man in the Gar­dens af­ter Lock-​out Time, but he nev­er thought for a mo­ment that he was the hu­man. He was feel­ing stuffi­er and stuffi­er, and more and more wist­ful to learn what he want­ed done to his nose, but he pur­sued them with the vi­tal ques­tion in vain; the timid crea­tures ran from him, and even the Lancers, when he ap­proached them up the Hump, turned swift­ly in­to a side-​walk, on the pre­tence that they saw him there.

De­spair­ing of the fairies, he re­solved to con­sult the birds, but now he re­mem­bered, as an odd thing, that all the birds on the weep­ing beech had flown away when he alight­ed on it, and though that had not trou­bled him at the time, he saw its mean­ing now. Ev­ery liv­ing thing was shun­ning him. Poor lit­tle Pe­ter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a bird, he was sit­ting on his wrong part. It is a bless­ing that he did not know, for oth­er­wise he would have lost faith in his pow­er to fly, and the mo­ment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for­ev­er to be able to do it. The rea­son birds can fly and we can’t is sim­ply that they have per­fect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

Now, ex­cept by fly­ing, no one can reach the is­land in the Ser­pen­tine, for the boats of hu­mans are for­bid­den to land there, and there are stakes round it, stand­ing up in the wa­ter, on each of which a bird-​sen­tinel sits by day and night. It was to the is­land that Pe­ter now flew to put his strange case be­fore old Solomon Caw, and he alight­ed on it with re­lief, much heart­ened to find him­self at last at home, as the birds call the is­land. All of them were asleep, in­clud­ing the sen­tinels, ex­cept Solomon, who was wide awake on one side, and he lis­tened qui­et­ly to Pe­ter’s ad­ven­tures, and then told him their true mean­ing.

“Look at your night-​gown, if you don’t be­lieve me,” Solomon said, and with star­ing eyes Pe­ter looked at his night­gown, and then at the sleep­ing birds. Not one of them wore any­thing.

“How many of your toes are thumbs?” said Solomon a lit­tle cru­el­ly, and Pe­ter saw to his con­ster­na­tion, that all his toes were fin­gers. The shock was so great that it drove away his cold.

“Ruf­fle your feath­ers,” said that grim old Solomon, and Pe­ter tried most des­per­ate­ly hard to ruf­fle his feath­ers, but he had none. Then he rose up, quak­ing, and for the first time since he stood on the win­dow-​ledge, he re­mem­bered a la­dy who had been very fond of him.

“I think I shall go back to moth­er,” he said timid­ly.

“Good-​bye,” replied Solomon Caw with a queer look.

But Pe­ter hes­itat­ed. “Why don’t you go?” the old one asked po­lite­ly.

“I sup­pose,” said Pe­ter huski­ly, “I sup­pose I can still fly?”

You see, he had lost faith.

“Poor lit­tle half-​and-​half,” said Solomon, who was not re­al­ly hard-​heart­ed, “you will nev­er be able to fly again, not even on windy days. You must live here on the is­land al­ways.”

“And nev­er even go to the Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens?” Pe­ter asked trag­ical­ly.

“How could you get across?” said Solomon. He promised very kind­ly, how­ev­er, to teach Pe­ter as many of the bird ways as could be learned by one of such an awk­ward shape.

“Then I sha’n't be ex­act­ly a hu­man?” Pe­ter asked.

“No.”

“Nor ex­act­ly a bird?”

“No.”

“What shall I be?”

“You will be a Be­twixt-​and-​Be­tween,” Solomon said, and cer­tain­ly he was a wise old fel­low, for that is ex­act­ly how it turned out.

The birds on the is­land nev­er got used to him. His odd­ities tick­led them ev­ery day, as if they were quite new, though it was re­al­ly the birds that were new. They came out of the eggs dai­ly, and laughed at him at once, then off they soon flew to be hu­mans, and oth­er birds came out of oth­er eggs, and so it went on for­ev­er. The crafty moth­er-​birds, when they tired of sit­ting on their eggs, used to get the young one to break their shells a day be­fore the right time by whis­per­ing to them that now was their chance to see Pe­ter wash­ing or drink­ing or eat­ing. Thou­sands gath­ered round him dai­ly to watch him do these things, just as you watch the pea­cocks, and they screamed with de­light when he lift­ed the crusts they flung him with his hands in­stead of in the usu­al way with the mouth. All his food was brought to him from the Gar­dens at Solomon’s or­ders by the birds. He would not eat worms or in­sects (which they thought very sil­ly of him), so they brought him bread in their beaks. Thus, when you cry out, “Greedy! Greedy!” to the bird that flies away with the big crust, you know now that you ought not to do this, for he is very like­ly tak­ing it to Pe­ter Pan.

Pe­ter wore no night-​gown now. You see, the birds were al­ways beg­ging him for bits of it to line their nests with, and, be­ing very good-​na­tured, he could not refuse, so by Solomon’s ad­vice he had hid­den what was left of it. But, though he was now quite naked, you must not think that he was cold or un­hap­py. He was usu­al­ly very hap­py and gay, and the rea­son was that Solomon had kept his promise and taught him many of the bird ways. To be eas­ily pleased, for in­stance, and al­ways to be re­al­ly do­ing some­thing, and to think that what­ev­er he was do­ing was a thing of vast im­por­tance. Pe­ter be­came very clever at help­ing the birds to build their nests; soon he could build bet­ter than a wood-​pi­geon, and near­ly as well as a black­bird, though nev­er did he sat­is­fy the finch­es, and he made nice lit­tle wa­ter-​troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fin­gers. He al­so be­came very learned in bird-​lore, and knew an east-​wind from a west-​wind by its smell, and he could see the grass grow­ing and hear the in­sects walk­ing about in­side the tree-​trunks. But the best thing Solomon had done was to teach him to have a glad heart. All birds have glad hearts un­less you rob their nests, and so as they were the on­ly kind of heart Solomon knew about, it was easy to him to teach Pe­ter how to have one.

Pe­ter’s heart was so glad that he felt he must sing all day long, just as the birds sing for joy, but, be­ing part­ly hu­man, he need­ed in in­stru­ment, so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to sit by the shore of the is­land of an evening, prac­tis­ing the sough of the wind and the rip­ple of the wa­ter, and catch­ing hand­fuls of the shine of the moon, and he put them all in his pipe and played them so beau­ti­ful­ly that even the birds were de­ceived, and they would say to each oth­er, “Was that a fish leap­ing in the wa­ter or was it Pe­ter play­ing leap­ing fish on his pipe?” and some­times he played the birth of birds, and then the moth­ers would turn round in their nests to see whether they had laid an egg. If you are a child of the Gar­dens you must know the chest­nut-​tree near the bridge, which comes out in flow­er first of all the chest­nuts, but per­haps you have not heard why this tree leads the way. It is be­cause Pe­ter wea­ries for sum­mer and plays that it has come, and the chest­nut be­ing so near, hears him and is cheat­ed.

But as Pe­ter sat by the shore tootling di­vine­ly on his pipe he some­times fell in­to sad thoughts and then the mu­sic be­came sad al­so, and the rea­son of all this sad­ness was that he could not reach the Gar­dens, though he could see them through the arch of the bridge. He knew he could nev­er be a re­al hu­man again, and scarce­ly want­ed to be one, but oh, how he longed to play as oth­er chil­dren play, and of course there is no such love­ly place to play in as the Gar­dens. The birds brought him news of how boys and girls play, and wist­ful tears start­ed in Pe­ter’s eyes.

Per­haps you won­der why he did not swim across. The rea­son was that he could not swim. He want­ed to know how to swim, but no one on the is­land knew the way ex­cept the ducks, and they are so stupid. They were quite will­ing to teach him, but all they could say about it was, “You sit down on the top of the wa­ter in this way, and then you kick out like that.” Pe­ter tried it of­ten, but al­ways be­fore he could kick out he sank. What he re­al­ly need­ed to know was how you sit on the wa­ter with­out sink­ing, and they said it was quite im­pos­si­ble to ex­plain such an easy thing as that. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly swans touched on the is­land, and he would give them all his day’s food and then ask them how they sat on the wa­ter, but as soon as he had no more to give them the hate­ful things hissed at him and sailed away.

Once he re­al­ly thought he had dis­cov­ered a way of reach­ing the Gar­dens. A won­der­ful white thing, like a run­away news­pa­per, float­ed high over the is­land and then tum­bled, rolling over and over af­ter the man­ner of a bird that has bro­ken its wing. Pe­ter was so fright­ened that he hid, but the birds told him it was on­ly a kite, and what a kite is, and that it must have tugged its string out of a boy’s hand, and soared away. Af­ter that they laughed at Pe­ter for be­ing so fond of the kite, he loved it so much that he even slept with one hand on it, and I think this was pa­thet­ic and pret­ty, for the rea­son he loved it was be­cause it had be­longed to a re­al boy.

To the birds this was a very poor rea­son, but the old­er ones felt grate­ful to him at this time be­cause he had nursed a num­ber of fledglings through the Ger­man measles, and they of­fered to show him how birds fly a kite. So six of them took the end of the string in their beaks and flew away with it; and to his amaze­ment it flew af­ter them and went even high­er than they.

Pe­ter screamed out, “Do it again!” and with great good na­ture they did it sev­er­al times, and al­ways in­stead of thank­ing them he cried, “Do it again!” which shows that even now he had not quite for­got­ten what it was to be a boy.

At last, with a grand de­sign burn­ing with­in his brave heart, he begged them to do it once more with him cling­ing to the tail, and now a hun­dred flew off with the string, and Pe­ter clung to the tail, mean­ing to drop off when he was over the Gar­dens. But the kite broke to pieces in the air, and he would have drowned in the Ser­pen­tine had he not caught hold of two in­dig­nant swans and made them car­ry him to the is­land. Af­ter this the birds said that they would help him no more in his mad en­ter­prise.

Nev­er­the­less, Pe­ter did reach the Gar­dens at last by the help of Shel­ley’s boat, as I am now to tell you.

The Thrush’s Nest

Shel­ley was a young gen­tle­man and as grown-​up as he need ev­er ex­pect to be. He was a po­et; and they are nev­er ex­act­ly grown-​up. They are peo­ple who de­spise mon­ey ex­cept what you need for to-​day, and he had all that and five pounds over. So, when he was walk­ing in the Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens, he made a pa­per boat of his bank-​note, and sent it sail­ing on the Ser­pen­tine.

It reached the is­land at night: and the look-​out brought it to Solomon Caw, who thought at first that it was the usu­al thing, a mes­sage from a la­dy, say­ing she would be obliged if he could let her have a good one. They al­ways ask for the best one he has, and if he likes the let­ter he sends one from Class A, but if it ruf­fles him he sends very fun­ny ones in­deed. Some­times he sends none at all, and at an­oth­er time he sends a nest­ful; it all de­pends on the mood you catch him in. He likes you to leave it all to him, and if you men­tion par­tic­ular­ly that you hope he will see his way to mak­ing it a boy this time, he is al­most sure to send an­oth­er girl. And whether you are a la­dy or on­ly a lit­tle boy who wants a ba­by-​sis­ter, al­ways take pains to write your ad­dress clear­ly. You can’t think what a lot of ba­bies Solomon has sent to the wrong house.

Shel­ley’s boat, when opened, com­plete­ly puz­zled Solomon, and he took coun­sel of his as­sis­tants, who hav­ing walked over it twice, first with their toes point­ed out, and then with their toes point­ed in, de­cid­ed that it came from some greedy per­son who want­ed five. They thought this be­cause there was a large five print­ed on it. “Pre­pos­ter­ous!” cried Solomon in a rage, and he pre­sent­ed it to Pe­ter; any­thing use­less which drift­ed up­on the is­land was usu­al­ly giv­en to Pe­ter as a play-​thing.

But he did not play with his pre­cious bank-​note, for he knew what it was at once, hav­ing been very ob­ser­vant dur­ing the week when he was an or­di­nary boy. With so much mon­ey, he re­flect­ed, he could sure­ly at last con­trive to reach the Gar­dens, and he con­sid­ered all the pos­si­ble ways, and de­cid­ed (wise­ly, I think) to choose the best way. But, first, he had to tell the birds of the val­ue of Shel­ley’s boat; and though they were too hon­est to de­mand it back, he saw that they were galled, and they cast such black looks at Solomon, who was rather vain of his clev­er­ness, that he flew away to the end of the is­land, and sat there very de­pressed with his head buried in his wings. Now Pe­ter knew that un­less Solomon was on your side, you nev­er got any­thing done for you in the is­land, so he fol­lowed him and tried to heart­en him.

Nor was this all that Pe­ter did to pin the pow­er­ful old fel­low’s good will. You must know that Solomon had no in­ten­tion of re­main­ing in of­fice all his life. He looked for­ward to re­tir­ing by-​and-​by, and de­vot­ing his green old age to a life of plea­sure on a cer­tain yew-​stump in the Figs which had tak­en his fan­cy, and for years he had been qui­et­ly fill­ing his stock­ing. It was a stock­ing be­long­ing to some bathing per­son which had been cast up­on the is­land, and at the time I speak of it con­tained a hun­dred and eighty crumbs, thir­ty-​four nuts, six­teen crusts, a pen-​wiper and a boot­lace. When his stock­ing was full, Solomon cal­cu­lat­ed that he would be able to re­tire on a com­pe­ten­cy. Pe­ter now gave him a pound. He cut it off his bank-​note with a sharp stick.

This made Solomon his friend for ev­er, and af­ter the two had con­sult­ed to­geth­er they called a meet­ing of the thrush­es. You will see present­ly why thrush­es on­ly were in­vit­ed.

The scheme to be put be­fore them was re­al­ly Pe­ter’s, but Solomon did most of the talk­ing, be­cause he soon be­came ir­ri­ta­ble if oth­er peo­ple talked. He be­gan by say­ing that he had been much im­pressed by the su­pe­ri­or in­ge­nu­ity shown by the thrush­es in nest-​build­ing, and this put them in­to good-​hu­mour at once, as it was meant to do; for all the quar­rels be­tween birds are about the best way of build­ing nests. Oth­er birds, said Solomon, omit­ted to line their nests with mud, and as a re­sult they did not hold wa­ter. Here he cocked his head as if he had used an unan­swer­able ar­gu­ment; but, un­for­tu­nate­ly, a Mrs. Finch had come to the meet­ing un­in­vit­ed, and she squeaked out, “We don’t build nests to hold wa­ter, but to hold eggs,” and then the thrush­es stopped cheer­ing, and Solomon was so per­plexed that he took sev­er­al sips of wa­ter.

“Con­sid­er,” he said at last, “how warm the mud makes the nest.”

“Con­sid­er,” cried Mrs. Finch, “that when wa­ter gets in­to the nest it re­mains there and your lit­tle ones are drowned.”

The thrush­es begged Solomon with a look to say some­thing crush­ing in re­ply to this, but again he was per­plexed.

“Try an­oth­er drink,” sug­gest­ed Mrs. Finch pert­ly. Kate was her name, and all Kates are saucy.

Solomon did try an­oth­er drink, and it in­spired him. “If,” said he, “a finch’s nest is placed on the Ser­pen­tine it fills and breaks to pieces, but a thrush’s nest is still as dry as the cup of a swan’s back.”

How the thrush­es ap­plaud­ed! Now they knew why they lined their nests with mud, and when Mrs. Finch called out, “We don’t place our nests on the Ser­pen­tine,” they did what they should have done at first: chased her from the meet­ing. Af­ter this it was most or­der­ly. What they had been brought to­geth­er to hear, said Solomon, was this: their young friend, Pe­ter Pan, as they well knew, want­ed very much to be able to cross to the Gar­dens, and he now pro­posed, with their help, to build a boat.

At this the thrush­es be­gan to fid­get, which made Pe­ter trem­ble for his scheme.

Solomon ex­plained hasti­ly that what he meant was not one of the cum­brous boats that hu­mans use; the pro­posed boat was to be sim­ply a thrush’s nest large enough to hold Pe­ter.

But still, to Pe­ter’s agony, the thrush­es were sulky. “We are very busy peo­ple,” they grum­bled, “and this would be a big job.”

“Quite so,” said Solomon, “and, of course, Pe­ter would not al­low you to work for noth­ing. You must re­mem­ber that he is now in com­fort­able cir­cum­stances, and he will pay you such wages as you have nev­er been paid be­fore. Pe­ter Pan au­tho­ris­es me to say that you shall all be paid six­pence a day.”

Then all the thrush­es hopped for joy, and that very day was be­gun the cel­ebrat­ed Build­ing of the Boat. All their or­di­nary busi­ness fell in­to ar­rears. It was the time of year when they should have been pair­ing, but not a thrush’s nest was built ex­cept this big one, and so Solomon soon ran short of thrush­es with which to sup­ply the de­mand from the main­land. The stout, rather greedy chil­dren, who look so well in per­am­bu­la­tors but get puffed eas­ily when they walk, were all young thrush­es once, and ladies of­ten ask spe­cial­ly for them. What do you think Solomon did? He sent over to the house­tops for a lot of spar­rows and or­dered them to lay their eggs in old thrush­es’ nests and sent their young to the ladies and swore they were all thrush­es! It was known af­ter­ward on the is­land as the Spar­rows’ Year, and so, when you meet, as you doubt­less some­times do, grown-​up peo­ple who puff and blow as if they thought them­selves big­ger than they are, very like­ly they be­long to that year. You ask them.

Pe­ter was a just mas­ter, and paid his work-​peo­ple ev­ery evening. They stood in rows on the branch­es, wait­ing po­lite­ly while he cut the pa­per six­pences out of his bank-​note, and present­ly he called the roll, and then each bird, as the names were men­tioned, flew down and got six­pence. It must have been a fine sight.

And at last, af­ter months of la­bor, the boat was fin­ished. Oh, the de­port­ment of Pe­ter as he saw it grow­ing more and more like a great thrush’s nest! From the very be­gin­ning of the build­ing of it he slept by its side, and of­ten woke up to say sweet things to it, and af­ter it was lined with mud and the mud had dried he al­ways slept in it. He sleeps in his nest still, and has a fas­ci­nat­ing way of curl­ing round in it, for it is just large enough to hold him com­fort­ably when he curls round like a kit­ten. It is brown in­side, of course, but out­side it is most­ly green, be­ing wo­ven of grass and twigs, and when these with­er or snap the walls are thatched afresh. There are al­so a few feath­ers here and there, which came off the thrush­es while they were build­ing.

The oth­er birds were ex­treme­ly jeal­ous and said that the boat would not bal­ance on the wa­ter, but it lay most beau­ti­ful­ly steady; they said the wa­ter would come in­to it, but no wa­ter came in­to it. Next they said that Pe­ter had no oars, and this caused the thrush­es to look at each oth­er in dis­may, but Pe­ter replied that he had no need of oars, for he had a sail, and with such a proud, hap­py face he pro­duced a sail which he had fash­ioned out of this night-​gown, and though it was still rather like a night-​gown it made a love­ly sail. And that night, the moon be­ing full, and all the birds asleep, he did en­ter his cor­acle (as Mas­ter Fran­cis Pret­ty would have said) and de­part out of the is­land. And first, he knew not why, he looked up­ward, with his hands clasped, and from that mo­ment his eyes were pinned to the west.

He had promised the thrush­es to be­gin by mak­ing short voy­ages, with them to his guides, but far away he saw the Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens beck­on­ing to him be­neath the bridge, and he could not wait. His face was flushed, but he nev­er looked back; there was an ex­ul­ta­tion in his lit­tle breast that drove out fear. Was Pe­ter the least gal­lant of the En­glish mariners who have sailed west­ward to meet the Un­known?

At first, his boat turned round and round, and he was driv­en back to the place of his start­ing, where­upon he short­ened sail, by re­mov­ing one of the sleeves, and was forth­with car­ried back­ward by a con­trary breeze, to his no small per­il. He now let go the sail, with the re­sult that he was drift­ed to­ward the far shore, where are black shad­ows he knew not the dan­gers of, but sus­pect­ed them, and so once more hoist­ed his night-​gown and went roomer of the shad­ows un­til he caught a favour­ing wind, which bore him west­ward, but at so great a speed that he was like to be broke against the bridge. Which, hav­ing avoid­ed, he passed un­der the bridge and came, to his great re­joic­ing, with­in full sight of the delectable Gar­dens. But hav­ing tried to cast an­chor, which was a stone at the end of a piece of the kite-​string, he found no bot­tom, and was fain to hold off, seek­ing for moor­age, and, feel­ing his way, he buf­fet­ed against a sunken reef that cast him over­board by the great­ness of the shock, and he was near to be­ing drowned, but clam­bered back in­to the ves­sel. There now arose a mighty storm, ac­com­pa­nied by roar­ing of wa­ters, such as he had nev­er heard the like, and he was tossed this way and that, and his hands so numbed with the cold that he could not close them. Hav­ing es­caped the dan­ger of which, he was mer­ci­ful­ly car­ried in­to a small bay, where his boat rode at peace.

Nev­er­the­less, he was not yet in safe­ty; for, on pre­tend­ing to dis­em­bark, he found a mul­ti­tude of small peo­ple drawn up on the shore to con­test his land­ing; and shout­ing shril­ly to him to be off, for it was long past Lock-​out Time. This, with much bran­dish­ing of their hol­ly-​leaves, and al­so a com­pa­ny of them car­ried an ar­row which some boy had left in the Gar­dens, and this they were pre­pared to use as a bat­ter­ing-​ram.

Then Pe­ter, who knew them for the fairies, called out that he was not an or­di­nary hu­man and had no de­sire to do them dis­plea­sure, but to be their friend, nev­er­the­less, hav­ing found a jol­ly har­bour, he was in no tem­per to draw off there-​from, and he warned them if they sought to mis­chief him to stand to their harms.

So say­ing; he bold­ly leapt ashore, and they gath­ered around him with in­tent to slay him, but there then arose a great cry among the wom­en, and it was be­cause they had now ob­served that his sail was a ba­by’s night-​gown. Where­upon, they straight­way loved him, and grieved that their laps were too small, the which I can­not ex­plain, ex­cept by say­ing that such is the way of wom­en. The men-​fairies now sheathed their weapons on ob­serv­ing the be­haviour of their wom­en, on whose in­tel­li­gence they set great store, and they led him civil­ly to their queen, who con­ferred up­on him the cour­tesy of the Gar­dens af­ter Lock-​out Time, and hence­forth Pe­ter could go whith­er he chose, and the fairies had or­ders to put him in com­fort.

Such was his first voy­age to the Gar­dens, and you may gath­er from the an­tiq­ui­ty of the lan­guage that it took place a long time ago. But Pe­ter nev­er grows any old­er, and if we could be watch­ing for him un­der the bridge to-​night (but, of course, we can’t), I dare­say we should see him hoist­ing his night-​gown and sail­ing or pad­dling to­ward us in the Thrush’s Nest. When he sails, he sits down, but he stands up to pad­dle. I shall tell you present­ly how he got his pad­dle.

Long be­fore the time for the open­ing of the gates comes he steals back to the is­land, for peo­ple must not see him (he is not so hu­man as all that), but this gives him hours for play, and he plays ex­act­ly as re­al chil­dren play. At least he thinks so, and it is one of the pa­thet­ic things about him that he of­ten plays quite wrong­ly.

You see, he had no one to tell him how chil­dren re­al­ly play, for the fairies were all more or less in hid­ing un­til dusk, and so know noth­ing, and though the buds pre­tend­ed that they could tell him a great deal, when the time for telling came, it was won­der­ful how lit­tle they re­al­ly knew. They told him the truth about hide-​and-​seek, and he of­ten plays it by him­self, but even the ducks on the Round Pond could not ex­plain to him what it is that makes the pond so fas­ci­nat­ing to boys. Ev­ery night the ducks have for­got­ten all the events of the day, ex­cept the num­ber of pieces of cake thrown to them. They are gloomy crea­tures, and say that cake is not what it was in their young days.

So Pe­ter had to find out many things for him­self. He of­ten played ships at the Round Pond, but his ship was on­ly a hoop which he had found on the grass. Of course, he had nev­er seen a hoop, and he won­dered what you play at with them, and de­cid­ed that you play at pre­tend­ing they are boats. This hoop al­ways sank at once, but he wad­ed in for it, and some­times he dragged it glee­ful­ly round the rim of the pond, and he was quite proud to think that he had dis­cov­ered what boys do with hoops.

An­oth­er time, when he found a child’s pail, he thought it was for sit­ting in, and he sat so hard in it that he could scarce­ly get out of it. Al­so he found a bal­loon. It was bob­bing about on the Hump, quite as if it was hav­ing a game by it­self, and he caught it af­ter an ex­cit­ing chase. But he thought it was a ball, and Jen­ny Wren had told him that boys kick balls, so he kicked it; and af­ter that he could not find it any­where.

Per­haps the most sur­pris­ing thing he found was a per­am­bu­la­tor. It was un­der a lime-​tree, near the en­trance to the Fairy Queen’s Win­ter Palace (which is with­in the cir­cle of the sev­en Span­ish chest­nuts), and Pe­ter ap­proached it war­ily, for the birds had nev­er men­tioned such things to him. Lest it was alive, he ad­dressed it po­lite­ly, and then, as it gave no an­swer, he went near­er and felt it cau­tious­ly. He gave it a lit­tle push, and it ran from him, which made him think it must be alive af­ter all; but, as it had run from him, he was not afraid. So he stretched out his hand to pull it to him, but this time it ran at him, and he was so alarmed that he leapt the rail­ing and scud­ded away to his boat. You must not think, how­ev­er, that he was a cow­ard, for he came back next night with a crust in one hand and a stick in the oth­er, but the per­am­bu­la­tor had gone, and he nev­er saw an­oth­er one. I have promised to tell you al­so about his pad­dle. It was a child’s spade which he had found near St. Gov­or’s Well, and he thought it was a pad­dle.

Do you pity Pe­ter Pan for mak­ing these mis­takes? If so, I think it rather sil­ly of you. What I mean is that, of course, one must pity him now and then, but to pity him all the time would be im­per­ti­nence. He thought he had the most splen­did time in the Gar­dens, and to think you have it is al­most quite as good as re­al­ly to have it. He played with­out ceas­ing, while you of­ten waste time by be­ing mad-​dog or Mary-​An­nish. He could be nei­ther of these things, for he had nev­er heard of them, but do you think he is to be pitied for that?

Oh, he was mer­ry. He was as much mer­ri­er than you, for in­stance, as you are mer­ri­er than your fa­ther. Some­times he fell, like a spin­ning-​top, from sheer mer­ri­ment. Have you seen a grey­hound leap­ing the fences of the Gar­dens? That is how Pe­ter leaps them.

And think of the mu­sic of his pipe. Gen­tle­men who walk home at night write to the pa­pers to say they heard a nightin­gale in the Gar­dens, but it is re­al­ly Pe­ter’s pipe they hear. Of course, he had no moth­er–at least, what use was she to him? You can be sor­ry for him for that, but don’t be too sor­ry, for the next thing I mean to tell you is how he re­vis­it­ed her. It was the fairies who gave him the chance.

The Lit­tle House

Ev­ery­body has heard of the Lit­tle House in the Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens, which is the on­ly house in the whole world that the fairies have built for hu­mans. But no one has re­al­ly seen it, ex­cept just three or four, and they have not on­ly seen it but slept in it, and un­less you sleep in it you nev­er see it. This is be­cause it is not there when you lie down, but it is there when you wake up and step out­side.

In a kind of way ev­ery­one may see it, but what you see is not re­al­ly it, but on­ly the light in the win­dows. You see the light af­ter Lock-​out Time. David, for in­stance, saw it quite dis­tinct­ly far away among the trees as we were go­ing home from the pan­tomime, and Oliv­er Bai­ley saw it the night he stayed so late at the Tem­ple, which is the name of his fa­ther’s of­fice. An­gela Clare, who loves to have a tooth ex­tract­ed be­cause then she is treat­ed to tea in a shop, saw more than one light, she saw hun­dreds of them all to­geth­er, and this must have been the fairies build­ing the house, for they build it ev­ery night and al­ways in a dif­fer­ent part of the Gar­dens. She thought one of the lights was big­ger than the oth­ers, though she was not quite sure, for they jumped about so, and it might have been an­oth­er one that was big­ger. But if it was the same one, it was Pe­ter Pan’s light. Heaps of chil­dren have seen the fight, so that is noth­ing. But Maimie Man­ner­ing was the fa­mous one for whom the house was first built.

Maimie was al­ways rather a strange girl, and it was at night that she was strange. She was four years of age, and in the day­time she was the or­di­nary kind. She was pleased when her broth­er Tony, who was a mag­nif­icent fel­low of six, took no­tice of her, and she looked up to him in the right way, and tried in vain to im­itate him and was flat­tered rather than an­noyed when he shoved her about. Al­so, when she was bat­ting she would pause though the ball was in the air to point out to you that she was wear­ing new shoes. She was quite the or­di­nary kind in the day­time.

But as the shades of night fell, Tony, the swag­ger­er, lost his con­tempt for Maimie and eyed her fear­ful­ly, and no won­der, for with dark there came in­to her face a look that I can de­scribe on­ly as a leary look. It was al­so a serene look that con­trast­ed grand­ly with Tony’s un­easy glances. Then he would make her presents of his favourite toys (which he al­ways took away from her next morn­ing) and she ac­cept­ed them with a dis­turb­ing smile. The rea­son he was now be­come so wheedling and she so mys­te­ri­ous was (in brief) that they knew they were about to be sent to bed. It was then that Maimie was ter­ri­ble. Tony en­treat­ed her not to do it to-​night, and the moth­er and their coloured nurse threat­ened her, but Maimie mere­ly smiled her ag­itat­ing smile. And by-​and-​by when they were alone with their night-​light she would start up in bed cry­ing “Hsh! what was that?” Tony be­seech­es her! “It was noth­ing–don’t, Maimie, don’t!” and pulls the sheet over his head. “It is com­ing near­er!” she cries; “Oh, look at it, Tony! It is feel­ing your bed with its horns–it is bor­ing for you, oh, Tony, oh!” and she de­sists not un­til he rush­es down­stairs in his com­bi­na­tions, screech­ing. When they came up to whip Maimie they usu­al­ly found her sleep­ing tran­quil­ly, not sham­ming, you know, but re­al­ly sleep­ing, and look­ing like the sweet­est lit­tle an­gel, which seems to me to make it al­most worse.

But of course it was day­time when they were in the Gar­dens, and then Tony did most of the talk­ing. You could gath­er from his talk that he was a very brave boy, and no one was so proud of it as Maimie. She would have loved to have a tick­et on her say­ing that she was his sis­ter. And at no time did she ad­mire him more than when he told her, as he of­ten did with splen­did firm­ness, that one day he meant to re­main be­hind in the Gar­dens af­ter the gates were closed.

“Oh, Tony,” she would say, with aw­ful re­spect, “but the fairies will be so an­gry!”

“I dare­say,” replied Tony, care­less­ly.

“Per­haps,” she said, thrilling, “Pe­ter Pan will give you a sail in his boat!”

“I shall make him,” replied Tony; no won­der she was proud of him.

But they should not have talked so loud­ly, for one day they were over­heard by a fairy who had been gath­er­ing skele­ton leaves, from which the lit­tle peo­ple weave their sum­mer cur­tains, and af­ter that Tony was a marked boy. They loos­ened the rails be­fore he sat on them, so that down he came on the back of his head; they tripped him up by catch­ing his boot­lace and bribed the ducks to sink his boat. Near­ly all the nasty ac­ci­dents you meet with in the Gar­dens oc­cur be­cause the fairies have tak­en an ill-​will to you, and so it be­hoves you to be care­ful what you say about them.

Maimie was one of the kind who like to fix a day for do­ing things, but Tony was not that kind, and when she asked him which day he was to re­main be­hind in the Gar­dens af­ter Lock-​out he mere­ly replied, “Just some day;” he was quite vague about which day ex­cept when she asked “Will it be to­day?” and then he could al­ways say for cer­tain that it would not be to-​day. So she saw that he was wait­ing for a re­al good chance.

This brings us to an af­ter­noon when the Gar­dens were white with snow, and there was ice on the Round Pond, not thick enough to skate on but at least you could spoil it for to­mor­row by fling­ing stones, and many bright lit­tle boys and girls were do­ing that.

When Tony and his sis­ter ar­rived they want­ed to go straight to the pond, but their ayah said they must take a sharp walk first, and as she said this she glanced at the time-​board to see when the Gar­dens closed that night. It read half-​past five. Poor ayah! she is the one who laughs con­tin­uous­ly be­cause there are so many white chil­dren in the world, but she was not to laugh much more that day.

Well, they went up the Ba­by Walk and back, and when they re­turned to the time-​board she was sur­prised to see that it now read five o’clock for clos­ing time. But she was un­ac­quaint­ed with the tricky ways of the fairies, and so did not see (as Maimie and Tony saw at once) that they had changed the hour be­cause there was to be a ball to-​night. She said there was on­ly time now to walk to the top of the Hump and back, and as they trot­ted along with her she lit­tle guessed what was thrilling their lit­tle breasts. You see the chance had come of see­ing a fairy ball. Nev­er, Tony felt, could he hope for a bet­ter chance.

He had to feel this, for Maimie so plain­ly felt it for him. Her ea­ger eyes asked the ques­tion, “Is it to-​day?” and he gasped and then nod­ded. Maimie slipped her hand in­to Tony’s, and hers was hot, but his was cold. She did a very kind thing; she took off her scarf and gave it to him! “In case you should feel cold,” she whis­pered. Her face was aglow, but Tony’s was very gloomy.

As they turned on the top of the Hump he whis­pered to her, “I’m afraid Nurse would see me, so I sha’n't be able to do it.”

Maimie ad­mired him more than ev­er for be­ing afraid of noth­ing but their ayah, when there were so many un­known ter­rors to fear, and she said aloud, “Tony, I shall race you to the gate,” and in a whis­per, “Then you can hide,” and off they ran.

Tony could al­ways out­dis­tance her eas­ily, but nev­er had she known him speed away so quick­ly as now, and she was sure he hur­ried that he might have more time to hide. “Brave, brave!” her dot­ing eyes were cry­ing when she got a dread­ful shock; in­stead of hid­ing, her hero had run out at the gate! At this bit­ter sight Maimie stopped blankly, as if all her lap­ful of dar­ling trea­sures were sud­den­ly spilled, and then for very dis­dain she could not sob; in a swell of protest against all pul­ing cow­ards she ran to St. Gov­or’s Well and hid in Tony’s stead.

When the ayah reached the gate and saw Tony far in front she thought her oth­er charge was with him and passed out. Twi­light came on, and scores and hun­dreds of peo­ple passed out, in­clud­ing the last one, who al­ways has to run for it, but Maimie saw them not. She had shut her eyes tight and glued them with pas­sion­ate tears. When she opened them some­thing very cold ran up her legs and up her arms and dropped in­to her heart. It was the still­ness of the Gar­dens. Then she heard clang, then from an­oth­er part _clang_, then _clang_, _clang_ far away. It was the Clos­ing of the Gates.

Im­me­di­ate­ly the last clang had died away Maimie dis­tinct­ly heard a voice say, “So that’s all right.” It had a wood­en sound and seemed to come from above, and she looked up in time to see an elm tree stretch­ing out its arms and yawn­ing.

She was about to say, “I nev­er knew you could speak!” when a metal­lic voice that seemed to come from the la­dle at the well re­marked to the elm, “I sup­pose it is a bit cold­ish up there?” and the elm replied, “Not par­tic­ular­ly, but you do get numb stand­ing so long on one leg,” and he flapped his arms vig­or­ous­ly just as the cab­men do be­fore they drive off. Maimie was quite sur­prised to see that a num­ber of oth­er tall trees were do­ing the same sort of thing and she stole away to the Ba­by Walk and crouched ob­ser­vant­ly un­der a Mi­nor­ca Hol­ly which shrugged its shoul­ders but did not seem to mind her.

She was not in the least cold. She was wear­ing a rus­set-​coloured pelisse and had the hood over her head, so that noth­ing of her showed ex­cept her dear lit­tle face and her curls. The rest of her re­al self was hid­den far away in­side so many warm gar­ments that in shape she seemed rather like a ball. She was about forty round the waist.

There was a good deal go­ing on in the Ba­by Walk, when Maimie ar­rived in time to see a mag­no­lia and a Per­sian lilac step over the rail­ing and set off for a smart walk. They moved in a jerky sort of way cer­tain­ly, but that was be­cause they used crutch­es. An el­der­ber­ry hob­bled across the walk, and stood chat­ting with some young quinces, and they all had crutch­es. The crutch­es were the sticks that are tied to young trees and shrubs. They were quite fa­mil­iar ob­jects to Maimie, but she had nev­er known what they were for un­til to-​night.

She peeped up the walk and saw her first fairy. He was a street boy fairy who was run­ning up the walk clos­ing the weep­ing trees. The way he did it was this, he pressed a spring in the trunk and they shut like um­brel­las, del­ug­ing the lit­tle plants be­neath with snow. “Oh, you naughty, naughty child!” Maimie cried in­dig­nant­ly, for she knew what it was to have a drip­ping um­brel­la about your ears.

For­tu­nate­ly the mis­chievous fel­low was out of earshot, but the chrysan­the­mums heard her, and they all said so point­ed­ly “Hoity-​toity, what is this?” that she had to come out and show her­self. Then the whole veg­etable king­dom was rather puz­zled what to do.

“Of course it is no af­fair of ours,” a spin­dle tree said af­ter they had whis­pered to­geth­er, “but you know quite well you ought not to be here, and per­haps our du­ty is to re­port you to the fairies; what do you think your­self?”

“I think you should not,” Maimie replied, which so per­plexed them that they said petu­lant­ly there was no ar­gu­ing with her. “I wouldn’t ask it of you,” she as­sured them, “if I thought it was wrong,” and of course af­ter this they could not well car­ry tales. They then said, “Well-​a-​day,” and “Such is life!” for they can be fright­ful­ly sar­cas­tic, but she felt sor­ry for those of them who had no crutch­es, and she said good-​na­tured­ly, “Be­fore I go to the fairies’ ball, I should like to take you for a walk one at a time; you can lean on me, you know.”

At this they clapped their hands, and she es­cort­ed them up to the Ba­by Walk and back again, one at a time, putting an arm or a fin­ger round the very frail, set­ting their leg right when it got too ridicu­lous, and treat­ing the for­eign ones quite as cour­te­ous­ly as the En­glish, though she could not un­der­stand a word they said.

They be­haved well on the whole, though some whim­pered that she had not tak­en them as far as she took Nan­cy or Grace or Dorothy, and oth­ers jagged her, but it was quite un­in­ten­tion­al, and she was too much of a la­dy to cry out. So much walk­ing tired her and she was anx­ious to be off to the ball, but she no longer felt afraid. The rea­son she felt no more fear was that it was now night-​time, and in the dark, you re­mem­ber, Maimie was al­ways rather strange.

They were now loath to let her go, for, “If the fairies see you,” they warned her, “they will mis­chief you, stab you to death or com­pel you to nurse their chil­dren or turn you in­to some­thing te­dious, like an ev­er­green oak.” As they said this they looked with af­fect­ed pity at an ev­er­green oak, for in win­ter they are very en­vi­ous of the ev­er­greens.

“Oh, la!” replied the oak bit­ing­ly, “how de­li­cious­ly cosy it is to stand here but­toned to the neck and watch you poor naked crea­tures shiv­er­ing!”

This made them sulky though they had re­al­ly brought it on them­selves, and they drew for Maimie a very gloomy pic­ture of the per­ils that faced her if she in­sist­ed on go­ing to the ball.

She learned from a pur­ple fil­bert that the court was not in its usu­al good tem­per at present, the cause be­ing the tan­ta­lis­ing heart of the Duke of Christ­mas Daisies. He was an Ori­en­tal fairy, very poor­ly of a dread­ful com­plaint, name­ly, in­abil­ity to love, and though he had tried many ladies in many lands he could not fall in love with one of them. Queen Mab, who rules in the Gar­dens, had been con­fi­dent that her girls would be­witch him, but alas, his heart, the doc­tor said, re­mained cold. This rather ir­ri­tat­ing doc­tor, who was his pri­vate physi­cian, felt the Duke’s heart im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter any la­dy was pre­sent­ed, and then al­ways shook his bald head and mur­mured, “Cold, quite cold!” Nat­ural­ly Queen Mab felt dis­graced, and first she tried the ef­fect of or­der­ing the court in­to tears for nine min­utes, and then she blamed the Cu­pids and de­creed that they should wear fools’ caps un­til they thawed the Duke’s frozen heart.

“How I should love to see the Cu­pids in their dear lit­tle fools’ caps!” Maimie cried, and away she ran to look for them very reck­less­ly, for the Cu­pids hate to be laughed at.

It is al­ways easy to dis­cov­er where a fairies’ ball is be­ing held, as rib­bons are stretched be­tween it and all the pop­ulous parts of the Gar­dens, on which those in­vit­ed may walk to the dance with­out wet­ting their pumps. This night the rib­bons were red and looked very pret­ty on the snow.

Maimie walked along­side one of them for some dis­tance with­out meet­ing any­body, but at last she saw a fairy cav­al­cade ap­proach­ing. To her sur­prise they seemed to be re­turn­ing from the ball, and she had just time to hide from them by bend­ing her knees and hold­ing out her arms and pre­tend­ing to be a gar­den chair. There were six horse­men in front and six be­hind, in the mid­dle walked a prim la­dy wear­ing a long train held up by two pages, and on the train, as if it were a couch, re­clined a love­ly girl, for in this way do aris­to­crat­ic fairies trav­el about. She was dressed in gold­en rain, but the most en­vi­able part of her was her neck, which was blue in colour and of a vel­vet tex­ture, and of course showed off her di­amond neck­lace as no white throat could have glo­ri­fied it. The high-​born fairies ob­tain this ad­mired ef­fect by prick­ing their skin, which lets the blue blood come through and dye them, and you can­not imag­ine any­thing so daz­zling un­less you have seen the ladies’ busts in the jew­ellers’ win­dows.

Maimie al­so no­ticed that the whole cav­al­cade seemed to be in a pas­sion, tilt­ing their noses high­er than it can be safe for even fairies to tilt them, and she con­clud­ed that this must be an­oth­er case in which the doc­tor had said “Cold, quite cold!”

Well, she fol­lowed the rib­bon to a place where it be­came a bridge over a dry pud­dle in­to which an­oth­er fairy had fall­en and been un­able to climb out. At first this lit­tle damsel was afraid of Maimie, who most kind­ly went to her aid, but soon she sat in her hand chat­ting gai­ly and ex­plain­ing that her name was Brown­ie, and that though on­ly a poor street singer she was on her way to the ball to see if the Duke would have her.

“Of course,” she said, “I am rather plain,” and this made Maimie un­com­fort­able, for in­deed the sim­ple lit­tle crea­ture was al­most quite plain for a fairy.

It was dif­fi­cult to know what to re­ply.

“I see you think I have no chance,” Brown­ie said fal­ter­ing­ly.

“I don’t say that,” Maimie an­swered po­lite­ly, “of course your face is just a tiny bit home­ly, but–” Re­al­ly it was quite awk­ward for her.

For­tu­nate­ly she re­mem­bered about her fa­ther and the bazaar. He had gone to a fash­ion­able bazaar where all the most beau­ti­ful ladies in Lon­don were on view for half-​a-​crown the sec­ond day, but on his re­turn home in­stead of be­ing dis­sat­is­fied with Maimie’s moth­er he had said, “You can’t think, my dear, what a re­lief it is to see a home­ly face again.”

Maimie re­peat­ed this sto­ry, and it for­ti­fied Brown­ie tremen­dous­ly, in­deed she had no longer the slight­est doubt that the Duke would choose her. So she scud­ded away up the rib­bon, call­ing out to Maimie not to fol­low lest the Queen should mis­chief her.

But Maimie’s cu­rios­ity tugged her for­ward, and present­ly at the sev­en Span­ish chest­nuts, she saw a won­der­ful light. She crept for­ward un­til she was quite near it, and then she peeped from be­hind a tree.

The light, which was as high as your head above the ground, was com­posed of myr­iads of glow-​worms all hold­ing on to each oth­er, and so form­ing a daz­zling canopy over the fairy ring. There were thou­sands of lit­tle peo­ple look­ing on, but they were in shad­ow and drab in colour com­pared to the glo­ri­ous crea­tures with­in that lu­mi­nous cir­cle who were so be­wil­der­ing­ly bright that Maimie had to wink hard all the time she looked at them.

It was amaz­ing and even ir­ri­tat­ing to her that the Duke of Christ­mas Daisies should be able to keep out of love for a mo­ment: yet out of love his dusky grace still was: you could see it by the shamed looks of the Queen and court (though they pre­tend­ed not to care), by the way dar­ling ladies brought for­ward for his ap­proval burst in­to tears as they were told to pass on, and by his own most drea­ry face.

Maimie could al­so see the pompous doc­tor feel­ing the Duke’s heart and hear him give ut­ter­ance to his par­rot cry, and she was par­tic­ular­ly sor­ry for the Cu­pids, who stood in their fools’ caps in ob­scure places and, ev­ery time they heard that “Cold, quite cold,” bowed their dis­graced lit­tle heads.

She was dis­ap­point­ed not to see Pe­ter Pan, and I may as well tell you now why he was so late that night. It was be­cause his boat had got wedged on the Ser­pen­tine be­tween fields of float­ing ice, through which he had to break a per­ilous pas­sage with his trusty pad­dle.

The fairies had as yet scarce­ly missed him, for they could not dance, so heavy were their hearts. They for­get all the steps when they are sad and re­mem­ber them again when they are mer­ry. David tells me that fairies nev­er say “We feel hap­py”: what they say is, “We feel _dancey_.”

Well, they were look­ing very un­dan­cy in­deed, when sud­den laugh­ter broke out among the on­look­ers, caused by Brown­ie, who had just ar­rived and was in­sist­ing on her right to be pre­sent­ed to the Duke.

Maimie craned for­ward ea­ger­ly to see how her friend fared, though she had re­al­ly no hope; no one seemed to have the least hope ex­cept Brown­ie her­self who, how­ev­er, was ab­so­lute­ly con­fi­dent. She was led be­fore his grace, and the doc­tor putting a fin­ger care­less­ly on the ducal heart, which for con­ve­nience sake was reached by a lit­tle trap-​door in his di­amond shirt, had be­gun to say me­chan­ical­ly, “Cold, qui–,” when he stopped abrupt­ly.

“What’s this?” he cried, and first he shook the heart like a watch, and then put his ear to it.

“Bless my soul!” cried the doc­tor, and by this time of course the ex­cite­ment among the spec­ta­tors was tremen­dous, fairies faint­ing right and left.

Ev­ery­body stared breath­less­ly at the Duke, who was very much star­tled and looked as if he would like to run away. “Good gra­cious me!” the doc­tor was heard mut­ter­ing, and now the heart was ev­ident­ly on fire, for he had to jerk his fin­gers away from it and put them in his mouth.

The sus­pense was aw­ful!

Then in a loud voice, and bow­ing low, “My Lord Duke,” said the physi­cian elat­ed­ly, “I have the hon­our to in­form your ex­cel­len­cy that your grace is in love.”

You can’t con­ceive the ef­fect of it. Brown­ie held out her arms to the Duke and he flung him­self in­to them, the Queen leapt in­to the arms of the Lord Cham­ber­lain, and the ladies of the court leapt in­to the arms of her gen­tle­men, for it is eti­quette to fol­low her ex­am­ple in ev­ery­thing. Thus in a sin­gle mo­ment about fifty mar­riages took place, for if you leap in­to each oth­er’s arms it is a fairy wed­ding. Of course a cler­gy­man has to be present.

How the crowd cheered and leapt! Trum­pets brayed, the moon came out, and im­me­di­ate­ly a thou­sand cou­ples seized hold of its rays as if they were rib­bons in a May dance and waltzed in wild aban­don round the fairy ring. Most glad­some sight of all, the Cu­pids plucked the hat­ed fools’ caps from their heads and cast them high in the air. And then Maimie went and spoiled ev­ery­thing. She couldn’t help it. She was crazy with de­light over her lit­tle friend’s good for­tune, so she took sev­er­al steps for­ward and cried in an ec­sta­sy, “Oh, Brown­ie, how splen­did!”

Ev­ery­body stood still, the mu­sic ceased, the lights went out, and all in the time you may take to say “Oh dear!” An aw­ful sense of her per­il came up­on Maimie, too late she re­mem­bered that she was a lost child in a place where no hu­man must be be­tween the lock­ing and the open­ing of the gates, she heard the mur­mur of an an­gry mul­ti­tude, she saw a thou­sand swords flash­ing for her blood, and she ut­tered a cry of ter­ror and fled.

How she ran! and all the time her eyes were start­ing out of her head. Many times she lay down, and then quick­ly jumped up and ran on again. Her lit­tle mind was so en­tan­gled in ter­rors that she no longer knew she was in the Gar­dens. The one thing she was sure of was that she must nev­er cease to run, and she thought she was still run­ning long af­ter she had dropped in the Figs and gone to sleep. She thought the snowflakes falling on her face were her moth­er kiss­ing her good-​night. She thought her cov­er­let of snow was a warm blan­ket, and tried to pull it over her head. And when she heard talk­ing through her dreams she thought it was moth­er bring­ing fa­ther to the nurs­ery door to look at her as she slept. But it was the fairies.

I am very glad to be able to say that they no longer de­sired to mis­chief her. When she rushed away they had rent the air with such cries as “Slay her!” “Turn her in­to some­thing ex­treme­ly un­pleas­ant!” and so on, but the pur­suit was de­layed while they dis­cussed who should march in front, and this gave Duchess Brown­ie time to cast her­self be­fore the Queen and de­mand a boon.

Ev­ery bride has a right to a boon, and what she asked for was Maimie’s life. “Any­thing ex­cept that,” replied Queen Mab stern­ly, and all the fairies chant­ed “Any­thing ex­cept that.” But when they learned how Maimie had be­friend­ed Brown­ie and so en­abled her to at­tend the ball to their great glo­ry and renown, they gave three huz­zas for the lit­tle hu­man, and set off, like an army, to thank her, the court ad­vanc­ing in front and the canopy keep­ing step with it. They traced Maimie eas­ily by her foot­prints in the snow.

But though they found her deep in snow in the Figs, it seemed im­pos­si­ble to thank Maimie, for they could not wak­en her. They went through the form of thank­ing her, that is to say, the new King stood on her body and read her a long ad­dress of wel­come, but she heard not a word of it. They al­so cleared the snow off her, but soon she was cov­ered again, and they saw she was in dan­ger of per­ish­ing of cold.

“Turn her in­to some­thing that does not mind the cold,” seemed a good sug­ges­tion of the doc­tor’s, but the on­ly thing they could think of that does not mind cold was a snowflake. “And it might melt,” the Queen point­ed out, so that idea had to be giv­en up.

A mag­nif­icent at­tempt was made to car­ry her to a shel­tered spot, but though there were so many of them she was too heavy. By this time all the ladies were cry­ing in their hand­ker­chiefs, but present­ly the Cu­pids had a love­ly idea. “Build a house round her,” they cried, and at once ev­ery­body per­ceived that this was the thing to do; in a mo­ment a hun­dred fairy sawyers were among the branch­es, ar­chi­tects were run­ning round Maimie, mea­sur­ing her; a brick­lay­er’s yard sprang up at her feet, sev­en­ty-​five ma­sons rushed up with the foun­da­tion stone and the Queen laid it, over­seers were ap­point­ed to keep the boys off, scaf­fold­ings were run up, the whole place rang with ham­mers and chis­els and turn­ing lath­es, and by this time the roof was on and the glaziers were putting in the win­dows.

The house was ex­act­ly the size of Maimie and per­fect­ly love­ly. One of her arms was ex­tend­ed and this had both­ered them for a sec­ond, but they built a ve­ran­dah round it, lead­ing to the front door. The win­dows were the size of a coloured pic­ture-​book and the door rather small­er, but it would be easy for her to get out by tak­ing off the roof. The fairies, as is their cus­tom, clapped their hands with de­light over their clev­er­ness, and they were all so mad­ly in love with the lit­tle house that they could not bear to think they had fin­ished it. So they gave it ev­er so many lit­tle ex­tra touch­es, and even then they added more ex­tra touch­es.

For in­stance, two of them ran up a lad­der and put on a chim­ney.

“Now we fear it is quite fin­ished,” they sighed.

But no, for an­oth­er two ran up the lad­der, and tied some smoke to the chim­ney.

“That cer­tain­ly fin­ish­es it,” they cried re­luc­tant­ly.

“Not at all,” cried a glow-​worm, “if she were to wake with­out see­ing a night-​light she might be fright­ened, so I shall be her night-​light.”

“Wait one mo­ment,” said a chi­na mer­chant, “and I shall make you a saucer.”

Now alas, it was ab­so­lute­ly fin­ished.

Oh, dear no!

“Gra­cious me,” cried a brass man­ufac­tur­er, “there’s no han­dle on the door,” and he put one on.

An iron­mon­ger added a scrap­er and an old la­dy ran up with a door-​mat. Car­pen­ters ar­rived with a wa­ter-​butt, and the painters in­sist­ed on paint­ing it.

Fin­ished at last!

“Fin­ished! how can it be fin­ished,” the plumber de­mand­ed scorn­ful­ly, “be­fore hot and cold are put in?” and he put in hot and cold. Then an army of gar­den­ers ar­rived with fairy carts and spades and seeds and bulbs and forc­ing-​hous­es, and soon they had a flow­er gar­den to the right of the ve­ran­dah and a veg­etable gar­den to the left, and ros­es and clema­tis on the walls of the house, and in less time than five min­utes all these dear things were in full bloom.

Oh, how beau­ti­ful the lit­tle house was now! But it was at last fin­ished true as true, and they had to leave it and re­turn to the dance. They all kissed their hands to it as they went away, and the last to go was Brown­ie. She stayed a mo­ment be­hind the oth­ers to drop a pleas­ant dream down the chim­ney.

All through the night the exquisite lit­tle house stood there in the Figs tak­ing care of Maimie, and she nev­er knew. She slept un­til the dream was quite fin­ished and woke feel­ing de­li­cious­ly cosy just as morn­ing was break­ing from its egg, and then she al­most fell asleep again, and then she called out,

“Tony,” for she thought she was at home in the nurs­ery. As Tony made no an­swer, she sat up, where­upon her head hit the roof, and it opened like the lid of a box, and to her be­wil­der­ment she saw all around her the Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens ly­ing deep in snow. As she was not in the nurs­ery she won­dered whether this was re­al­ly her­self, so she pinched her cheeks, and then she knew it was her­self, and this re­mind­ed her that she was in the mid­dle of a great ad­ven­ture. She re­mem­bered now ev­ery­thing that had hap­pened to her from the clos­ing of the gates up to her run­ning away from the fairies, but how­ev­er, she asked her­self, had she got in­to this fun­ny place? She stepped out by the roof, right over the gar­den, and then she saw the dear house in which she had passed the night. It so en­tranced her that she could think of noth­ing else.

“Oh, you dar­ling, oh, you sweet, oh, you love!” she cried.

Per­haps a hu­man voice fright­ened the lit­tle house, or maybe it now knew that its work was done, for no soon­er had Maimie spo­ken than it be­gan to grow small­er; it shrank so slow­ly that she could scarce be­lieve it was shrink­ing, yet she soon knew that it could not con­tain her now. It al­ways re­mained as com­plete as ev­er, but it be­came small­er and small­er, and the gar­den dwin­dled at the same time, and the snow crept clos­er, lap­ping house and gar­den up. Now the house was the size of a lit­tle dog’s ken­nel, and now of a Noah’s Ark, but still you could see the smoke and the door-​han­dle and the ros­es on the wall, ev­ery one com­plete. The glow-​worm fight was wan­ing too, but it was still there. “Dar­ling, loveli­est, don’t go!” Maimie cried, falling on her knees, for the lit­tle house was now the size of a reel of thread, but still quite com­plete. But as she stretched out her arms im­plor­ing­ly the snow crept up on all sides un­til it met it­self, and where the lit­tle house had been was now one un­bro­ken ex­panse of snow.

Maimie stamped her foot naugh­ti­ly, and was putting her fin­gers to her eyes, when she heard a kind voice say, “Don’t cry, pret­ty hu­man, don’t cry,” and then she turned round and saw a beau­ti­ful lit­tle naked boy re­gard­ing her wist­ful­ly. She knew at once that he must be Pe­ter Pan.

Lock-​out Time

It is fright­ful­ly dif­fi­cult to know much about the fairies, and al­most the on­ly thing known for cer­tain is that there are fairies wher­ev­er there are chil­dren. Long ago chil­dren were for­bid­den the Gar­dens, and at that time there was not a fairy in the place; then the chil­dren were ad­mit­ted, and the fairies came troop­ing in that very evening. They can’t re­sist fol­low­ing the chil­dren, but you sel­dom see them, part­ly be­cause they live in the day­time be­hind the rail­ings, where you are not al­lowed to go, and al­so part­ly be­cause they are so cun­ning. They are not a bit cun­ning af­ter Lock-​out, but un­til Lock-​out, my word!

When you were a bird you knew the fairies pret­ty well, and you re­mem­ber a good deal about them in your baby­hood, which it is a great pity you can’t write down, for grad­ual­ly you for­get, and I have heard of chil­dren who de­clared that they had nev­er once seen a fairy. Very like­ly if they said this in the Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens, they were stand­ing look­ing at a fairy all the time. The rea­son they were cheat­ed was that she pre­tend­ed to be some­thing else. This is one of their best tricks. They usu­al­ly pre­tend to be flow­ers, be­cause the court sits in the Fairies’ Basin, and there are so many flow­ers there, and all along the Ba­by Walk, that a flow­er is the thing least like­ly to at­tract at­ten­tion. They dress ex­act­ly like flow­ers, and change with the sea­sons, putting on white when lilies are in and blue for blue-​bells, and so on. They like cro­cus and hy­acinth time best of all, as they are par­tial to a bit of colour, but tulips (ex­cept white ones, which are the fairy-​cra­dles) they con­sid­er gar­ish, and they some­times put off dress­ing like tulips for days, so that the be­gin­ning of the tulip weeks is al­most the best time to catch them.

When they think you are not look­ing they skip along pret­ty live­ly, but if you look and they fear there is no time to hide, they stand quite still, pre­tend­ing to be flow­ers. Then, af­ter you have passed with­out know­ing that they were fairies, they rush home and tell their moth­ers they have had such an ad­ven­ture. The Fairy Basin, you re­mem­ber, is all cov­ered with ground-​ivy (from which they make their cas­tor-​oil), with flow­ers grow­ing in it here and there. Most of them re­al­ly are flow­ers, but some of them are fairies. You nev­er can be sure of them, but a good plan is to walk by look­ing the oth­er way, and then turn round sharply. An­oth­er good plan, which David and I some­times fol­low, is to stare them down. Af­ter a long time they can’t help wink­ing, and then you know for cer­tain that they are fairies.

There are al­so num­bers of them along the Ba­by Walk, which is a fa­mous gen­tle place, as spots fre­quent­ed by fairies are called. Once twen­ty-​four of them had an ex­traor­di­nary ad­ven­ture. They were a girls’ school out for a walk with the gov­erness, and all wear­ing hy­acinth gowns, when she sud­den­ly put her fin­ger to her mouth, and then they all stood still on an emp­ty bed and pre­tend­ed to be hy­acinths. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, what the gov­erness had heard was two gar­den­ers com­ing to plant new flow­ers in that very bed. They were wheel­ing a hand­cart with flow­ers in it, and were quite sur­prised to find the bed oc­cu­pied. “Pity to lift them hy­acinths,” said the one man. “Duke’s or­ders,” replied the oth­er, and, hav­ing emp­tied the cart, they dug up the board­ing-​school and put the poor, ter­ri­fied things in it in five rows. Of course, nei­ther the gov­erness nor the girls dare let on that they were fairies, so they were cart­ed far away to a pot­ting-​shed, out of which they es­caped in the night with­out their shoes, but there was a great row about it among the par­ents, and the school was ru­ined.

As for their hous­es, it is no use look­ing for them, be­cause they are the ex­act op­po­site of our hous­es. You can see our hous­es by day but you can’t see them by dark. Well, you can see their hous­es by dark, but you can’t see them by day, for they are the colour of night, and I nev­er heard of any­one yet who could see night in the day­time. This does not mean that they are black, for night has its colours just as day has, but ev­er so much brighter. Their blues and reds and greens are like ours with a light be­hind them. The palace is en­tire­ly built of many-​coloured glass­es, and is quite the loveli­est of all roy­al res­idences, but the queen some­times com­plains be­cause the com­mon peo­ple will peep in to see what she is do­ing. They are very in­quis­itive folk, and press quite hard against the glass, and that is why their noses are most­ly snub­by. The streets are miles long and very twisty, and have paths on each side made of bright worsted. The birds used to steal the worsted for their nests, but a po­lice­man has been ap­point­ed to hold on at the oth­er end.

One of the great dif­fer­ences be­tween the fairies and us is that they nev­er do any­thing use­ful. When the first ba­by laughed for the first time, his laugh broke in­to a mil­lion pieces, and they all went skip­ping about. That was the be­gin­ning of fairies. They look tremen­dous­ly busy, you know, as if they had not a mo­ment to spare, but if you were to ask them what they are do­ing, they could not tell you in the least. They are fright­ful­ly ig­no­rant, and ev­ery­thing they do is make-​be­lieve. They have a post­man, but he nev­er calls ex­cept at Christ­mas with his lit­tle box, and though they have beau­ti­ful schools, noth­ing is taught in them; the youngest child be­ing chief per­son is al­ways elect­ed mis­tress, and when she has called the roll, they all go out for a walk and nev­er come back. It is a very no­tice­able thing that, in fairy fam­ilies, the youngest is al­ways chief per­son, and usu­al­ly be­comes a prince or princess, and chil­dren re­mem­ber this, and think it must be so among hu­mans al­so, and that is why they are of­ten made un­easy when they come up­on their moth­er furtive­ly putting new frills on the basinette.

You have prob­ably ob­served that your ba­by-​sis­ter wants to do all sorts of things that your moth­er and her nurse want her not to do: to stand up at sit­ting-​down time, and to sit down at stand­ing-​up time, for in­stance, or to wake up when she should fall asleep, or to crawl on the floor when she is wear­ing her best frock, and so on, and per­haps you put this down to naugh­ti­ness. But it is not; it sim­ply means that she is do­ing as she has seen the fairies do; she be­gins by fol­low­ing their ways, and it takes about two years to get her in­to the hu­man ways. Her fits of pas­sion, which are aw­ful to be­hold, and are usu­al­ly called teething, are no such thing; they are her nat­ural ex­as­per­ation, be­cause we don’t un­der­stand her, though she is talk­ing an in­tel­li­gi­ble lan­guage. She is talk­ing fairy. The rea­son moth­ers and nurs­es know what her re­marks mean, be­fore oth­er peo­ple know, as that “Guch” means “Give it to me at once,” while “Wa” is “Why do you wear such a fun­ny hat?” is be­cause, mix­ing so much with ba­bies, they have picked up a lit­tle of the fairy lan­guage.

Of late David has been think­ing back hard about the fairy tongue, with his hands clutch­ing his tem­ples, and he has re­mem­bered a num­ber of their phras­es which I shall tell you some day if I don’t for­get. He had heard them in the days when he was a thrush, and though I sug­gest­ed to him that per­haps it is re­al­ly bird lan­guage he is re­mem­ber­ing, he says not, for these phras­es are about fun and ad­ven­tures, and the birds talked of noth­ing but nest-​build­ing. He dis­tinct­ly re­mem­bers that the birds used to go from spot to spot like ladies at shop-​win­dows, look­ing at the dif­fer­ent nests and say­ing, “Not my colour, my dear,” and “How would that do with a soft lin­ing?” and “But will it wear?” and “What hideous trim­ming!” and so on.

The fairies are exquisite dancers, and that is why one of the first things the ba­by does is to sign to you to dance to him and then to cry when you do it. They hold their great balls in the open air, in what is called a fairy-​ring. For weeks af­ter­ward you can see the ring on the grass. It is not there when they be­gin, but they make it by waltz­ing round and round. Some­times you will find mush­rooms in­side the ring, and these are fairy chairs that the ser­vants have for­got­ten to clear away. The chairs and the rings are the on­ly tell-​tale marks these lit­tle peo­ple leave be­hind them, and they would re­move even these were they not so fond of danc­ing that they toe it till the very mo­ment of the open­ing of the gates. David and I once found a fairy-​ring quite warm.

But there is al­so a way of find­ing out about the ball be­fore it takes place. You know the boards which tell at what time the Gar­dens are to close to-​day. Well, these tricky fairies some­times sly­ly change the board on a ball night, so that it says the Gar­dens are to close at six-​thir­ty for in­stance, in­stead of at sev­en. This en­ables them to get be­gun half an hour ear­li­er.

If on such a night we could re­main be­hind in the Gar­dens, as the fa­mous Maimie Man­ner­ing did, we might see de­li­cious sights, hun­dreds of love­ly fairies has­ten­ing to the ball, the mar­ried ones wear­ing their wed­ding-​rings round their waists, the gen­tle­men, all in uni­form, hold­ing up the ladies’ trains, and linkmen run­ning in front car­ry­ing win­ter cher­ries, which are the fairy-​lanterns, the cloak­room where they put on their sil­ver slip­pers and get a tick­et for their wraps, the flow­ers stream­ing up from the Ba­by Walk to look on, and al­ways wel­come be­cause they can lend a pin, the sup­per-​ta­ble, with Queen Mab at the head of it, and be­hind her chair the Lord Cham­ber­lain, who car­ries a dan­de­lion on which he blows when Her Majesty wants to know the time.

The ta­ble-​cloth varies ac­cord­ing to the sea­sons, and in May it is made of chest­nut-​blos­som. The way the fairy-​ser­vants do is this: The men, scores of them, climb up the trees and shake the branch­es, and the blos­som falls like snow. Then the la­dy ser­vants sweep it to­geth­er by whisk­ing their skirts un­til it is ex­act­ly like a ta­ble-​cloth, and that is how they get their ta­ble-​cloth.

They have re­al glass­es and re­al wine of three kinds, name­ly, black­thorn wine, berber­ris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen pours out, but the bot­tles are so heavy that she just pre­tends to pour out. There is bread and but­ter to be­gin with, of the size of a three­pen­ny bit; and cakes to end with, and they are so small that they have no crumbs. The fairies sit round on mush­rooms, and at first they are very well-​be­haved and al­ways cough off the ta­ble, and so on, but af­ter a bit they are not so well-​be­haved and stick their fin­gers in­to the but­ter, which is got from the roots of old trees, and the re­al­ly hor­rid ones crawl over the ta­ble-​cloth chas­ing sug­ar or oth­er del­ica­cies with their tongues. When the Queen sees them do­ing this she signs to the ser­vants to wash up and put away, and then ev­ery­body ad­journs to the dance, the Queen walk­ing in front while the Lord Cham­ber­lain walks be­hind her, car­ry­ing two lit­tle pots, one of which con­tains the juice of wall-​flow­er and the oth­er the juice of Solomon’s Seals. Wall-​flow­er juice is good for re­viv­ing dancers who fall to the ground in a fit, and Solomon’s Seals juice is for bruis­es. They bruise very eas­ily and when Pe­ter plays faster and faster they foot it till they fall down in fits. For, as you know with­out my telling you, Pe­ter Pan is the fairies’ or­ches­tra. He sits in the mid­dle of the ring, and they would nev­er dream of hav­ing a smart dance nowa­days with­out him. “P. P.” is writ­ten on the cor­ner of the in­vi­ta­tion-​cards sent out by all re­al­ly good fam­ilies. They are grate­ful lit­tle peo­ple, too, and at the princess’s com­ing-​of-​age ball (they come of age on their sec­ond birth­day and have a birth­day ev­ery month) they gave him the wish of his heart.

The way it was done was this. The Queen or­dered him to kneel, and then said that for play­ing so beau­ti­ful­ly she would give him the wish of his heart. Then they all gath­ered round Pe­ter to hear what was the wish of his heart, but for a long time he hes­itat­ed, not be­ing cer­tain what it was him­self.

“If I chose to go back to moth­er,” he asked at last, “could you give me that wish?”

Now this ques­tion vexed them, for were he to re­turn to his moth­er they should lose his mu­sic, so the Queen tilt­ed her nose con­temp­tu­ous­ly and said, “Pooh, ask for a much big­ger wish than that.”

“Is that quite a lit­tle wish?” he in­quired.

“As lit­tle as this,” the Queen an­swered, putting her hands near each oth­er.

“What size is a big wish?” he asked.

She mea­sured it off on her skirt and it was a very hand­some length.

Then Pe­ter re­flect­ed and said, “Well, then, I think I shall have two lit­tle wish­es in­stead of one big one.”

Of course, the fairies had to agree, though his clev­er­ness rather shocked them, and he said that his first wish was to go to his moth­er, but with the right to re­turn to the Gar­dens if he found her dis­ap­point­ing. His sec­ond wish he would hold in re­serve.

They tried to dis­suade him, and even put ob­sta­cles in the way.

“I can give you the pow­er to fly to her house,” the Queen said, “but I can’t open the door for you.”

“The win­dow I flew out at will be open,” Pe­ter said con­fi­dent­ly. “Moth­er al­ways keeps it open in the hope that I may fly back.

“How do you know?” they asked, quite sur­prised, and, re­al­ly, Pe­ter could not ex­plain how he knew.

“I just do know,” he said.

So as he per­sist­ed in his wish, they had to grant it. The way they gave him pow­er to fly was this: They all tick­led him on the shoul­der, and soon he felt a fun­ny itch­ing in that part and then up he rose high­er and high­er and flew away out of the Gar­dens and over the house-​tops.

It was so de­li­cious that in­stead of fly­ing straight to his old home he skimmed away over St. Paul’s to the Crys­tal Palace and back by the riv­er and Re­gent’s Park, and by the time he reached his moth­er’s win­dow he had quite made up his mind that his sec­ond wish should be to be­come a bird.

The win­dow was wide open, just as he knew it would be, and in he flut­tered, and there was his moth­er ly­ing asleep.

Pe­ter alight­ed soft­ly on the wood­en rail at the foot of the bed and had a good look at her. She lay with her head on her hand, and the hol­low in the pil­low was like a nest lined with her brown wavy hair. He re­mem­bered, though he had long for­got­ten it, that she al­ways gave her hair a hol­iday at night.

How sweet the frills of her night-​gown were. He was very glad she was such a pret­ty moth­er.

But she looked sad, and he knew why she looked sad. One of her arms moved as if it want­ed to go round some­thing, and he knew what it want­ed to go round.

“Oh, moth­er,” said Pe­ter to him­self, “if you just knew who is sit­ting on the rail at the foot of the bed.”

Very gen­tly he pat­ted the lit­tle mound that her feet made, and he could see by her face that she liked it. He knew he had but to say “Moth­er” ev­er so soft­ly, and she would wake up. They al­ways wake up at once if it is you that says their name. Then she would give such a joy­ous cry and squeeze him tight. How nice that would be to him, but oh, how exquisite­ly de­li­cious it would be to her. That I am afraid is how Pe­ter re­gard­ed it. In re­turn­ing to his moth­er he nev­er doubt­ed that he was giv­ing her the great­est treat a wom­an can have. Noth­ing can be more splen­did, he thought, than to have a lit­tle boy of your own. How proud of him they are; and very right and prop­er, too.

But why does Pe­ter sit so long on the rail, why does he not tell his moth­er that he has come back?

I quite shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two minds. Some­times he looked long­ing­ly at his moth­er, and some­times he looked long­ing­ly at the win­dow. Cer­tain­ly it would be pleas­ant to be her boy again, but, on the oth­er hand, what times those had been in the Gar­dens! Was he so sure that he would en­joy wear­ing clothes again? He popped off the bed and opened some draw­ers to have a look at his old gar­ments. They were still there, but he could not re­mem­ber how you put them on. The socks, for in­stance, were they worn on the hands or on the feet? He was about to try one of them on his hand, when he had a great ad­ven­ture. Per­haps the draw­er had creaked; at any rate, his moth­er woke up, for he heard her say “Pe­ter,” as if it was the most love­ly word in the lan­guage. He re­mained sit­ting on the floor and held his breath, won­der­ing how she knew that he had come back. If she said “Pe­ter” again, he meant to cry “Moth­er” and run to her. But she spoke no more, she made lit­tle moans on­ly, and when next he peeped at her she was once more asleep, with tears on her face.

It made Pe­ter very mis­er­able, and what do you think was the first thing he did? Sit­ting on the rail at the foot of the bed, he played a beau­ti­ful lul­la­by to his moth­er on his pipe. He had made it up him­self out of the way she said “Pe­ter,” and he nev­er stopped play­ing un­til she looked hap­py.

He thought this so clever of him that he could scarce­ly re­sist wak­en­ing her to hear her say, “Oh, Pe­ter, how exquisite­ly you play.” How­ev­er, as she now seemed com­fort­able, he again cast looks at the win­dow. You must not think that he med­itat­ed fly­ing away and nev­er com­ing back. He had quite de­cid­ed to be his moth­er’s boy, but hes­itat­ed about be­gin­ning to-​night. It was the sec­ond wish which trou­bled him. He no longer meant to make it a wish to be a bird, but not to ask for a sec­ond wish seemed waste­ful, and, of course, he could not ask for it with­out re­turn­ing to the fairies. Al­so, if he put off ask­ing for his wish too long it might go bad. He asked him­self if he had not been hard-​heart­ed to fly away with­out say­ing good-​bye to Solomon. “I should like aw­ful­ly to sail in my boat just once more,” he said wist­ful­ly to his sleep­ing moth­er. He quite ar­gued with her as if she could hear him. “It would be so splen­did to tell the birds of this ad­ven­ture,” he said coax­ing­ly. “I promise to come back,” he said solemn­ly and meant it, too.

And in the end, you know, he flew away. Twice he came back from the win­dow, want­ing to kiss his moth­er, but he feared the de­light of it might wak­en her, so at last he played her a love­ly kiss on his pipe, and then he flew back to the Gar­dens.

Many nights and even months passed be­fore he asked the fairies for his sec­ond wish; and I am not sure that I quite know why he de­layed so long. One rea­son was that he had so many good-​byes to say, not on­ly to his par­tic­ular friends, but to a hun­dred favourite spots. Then he had his last sail, and his very last sail, and his last sail of all, and so on. Again, a num­ber of farewell feasts were giv­en in his hon­our; and an­oth­er com­fort­able rea­son was that, af­ter all, there was no hur­ry, for his moth­er would nev­er weary of wait­ing for him. This last rea­son dis­pleased old Solomon, for it was an en­cour­age­ment to the birds to pro­cras­ti­nate. Solomon had sev­er­al ex­cel­lent mot­toes for keep­ing them at their work, such as “Nev­er put off lay­ing to-​day, be­cause you can lay to-​mor­row,” and “In this world there are no sec­ond chances,” and yet here was Pe­ter gai­ly putting off and none the worse for it. The birds point­ed this out to each oth­er, and fell in­to lazy habits.

But, mind you, though Pe­ter was so slow in go­ing back to his moth­er, he was quite de­cid­ed to go back. The best proof of this was his cau­tion with the fairies. They were most anx­ious that he should re­main in the Gar­dens to play to them, and to bring this to pass they tried to trick him in­to mak­ing such a re­mark as “I wish the grass was not so wet,” and some of them danced out of time in the hope that he might cry, “I do wish you would keep time!” Then they would have said that this was his sec­ond wish. But he smoked their de­sign, and though on oc­ca­sions he be­gan, “I wish–” he al­ways stopped in time. So when at last he said to them brave­ly, “I wish now to go back to moth­er for ev­er and al­ways,” they had to tick­le his shoul­der and let him go.

He went in a hur­ry in the end be­cause he had dreamt that his moth­er was cry­ing, and he knew what was the great thing she cried for, and that a hug from her splen­did Pe­ter would quick­ly make her to smile. Oh, he felt sure of it, and so ea­ger was he to be nestling in her arms that this time he flew straight to the win­dow, which was al­ways to be open for him.

But the win­dow was closed, and there were iron bars on it, and peer­ing in­side he saw his moth­er sleep­ing peace­ful­ly with her arm round an­oth­er lit­tle boy.

Pe­ter called, “Moth­er! moth­er!” but she heard him not; in vain he beat his lit­tle limbs against the iron bars. He had to fly back, sob­bing, to the Gar­dens, and he nev­er saw his dear again. What a glo­ri­ous boy he had meant to be to her. Ah, Pe­ter, we who have made the great mis­take, how dif­fer­ent­ly we should all act at the sec­ond chance. But Solomon was right; there is no sec­ond chance, not for most of us. When we reach the win­dow it is Lock-​out Time. The iron bars are up for life.

End of the Project Guten­berg Etext of Pe­ter Pan in Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens