CHAPTER I
PETER BREAKS THROUGH. The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been
never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could
come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one
mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that
one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such asweet mocking
Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the chief
beginning of the end.
knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the
This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy
her hand to her heart and cried, 'Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!'
mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put
playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her
the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, andboys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and
they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab
and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost
box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying
for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him
trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.
Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but
respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and
shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he
often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have
made any woman respect him.
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly,
almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a brussels sprout was
missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them
there were pictures of babies without faces. She drew them when she should
have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling's guesses.
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.
For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be
able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully
proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs.
Darling's bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at
him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his
way; his way was with a pencil and a piece of paper, and if she confused him
with suggestions he had to begin at the beginning again.
'Now don't interrupt,' he would beg of her. 'I have one pound seventeen here,
and two and six at the office; I can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten
shillings, making two nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three
nine seven, with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine
seven,—who is that moving?—eight nine seven, dot and carry seven—don't
speak, my own—and the pound you lent to that man who came to the door—
quiet, child—dot and carry child—there, you've done it!—did I say nine nine
seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on
nine nine seven?'
'Of course we can, George,' she cried. But she was prejudiced in Wendy's
favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.
'Remember mumps,' he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went
again. 'Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay it will
be more like thirty shillings—don't speak—measles one five, German measles
half a guinea, makes two fifteen six—don't waggle your finger—whoopingcough, say fifteen shillings'—and so on it went, and it added up differently
each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve
six, and the two kinds of measles treated as one.
There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower
squeak; but both were kept, and soon you might have seen the three of them
going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergarten school, accompanied by their
nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion
for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they
were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a
prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in
particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always thought children
important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in
Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into
perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she
followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved to
be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she was at bath-time; and up at
any moment of the night if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of
course her kennel was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a
cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking round
your throat. She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like
rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk
about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the
children to school, walking sedately by their side when they were well
behaved, and butting them back into line if they strayed. On John's footer days
she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her
mouth in case of rain. There is a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's
school where the nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor,
but that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior
social status to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented
visits to the nursery from Mrs. Darling's friends, but if they did come she first
whipped off Michael's pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding,
and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.
No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr.
Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the neighbours
talked.
He had his position in the city to consider.
Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling that she
did not admire him. 'I know she admires you tremendously, George,' Mrs.
Darling would assure him, and then she would sign to the children to be
specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in which the only otherservant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join. Such a midget she looked in her
long skirt and maid's cap, though she had sworn, when engaged, that she
would never see ten again. The gaiety of those romps! And gayest of all was
Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildly that all you could see of her was
the kiss, and then if you had dashed at her you might have got it. There never
was a simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds.
It is the nightly custom of every good mother after herchildren are asleep to
rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking
into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If
you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own
mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is
quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect,
lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth
you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet,
pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly
stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses
and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and
placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread
out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind. Doctors
sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become
intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind,
which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are
zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably
roads in the island; for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with
astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakishlooking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are
mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder
brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a
hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all; but there is also first
day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needlework, murders,
hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into
braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so
on; and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing
through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon
with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting,while Michael, who
was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a
boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a
house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends
at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents; but on the whole the
Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood still in a row you
could say of them that they have each other's nose, and so forth. On these
magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have
been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no
more.
Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact; not
large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure
and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs
and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before
you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights.
Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs. Darling found
things she could not understand, and of these quite the most perplexing was
the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John
and Michael's minds, while Wendy's began to be scrawled all over with him.
The name stood out in bolder letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs.
Darling gazed she felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.
'Yes, he is rather cocky,' Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother had been
questioning her.
'But who is he, my pet?'
'He is Peter Pan, you know, mother.'
At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood
she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies. There
were odd stories about him; as that when children died he went part of the way
with them, so that they should not be frightened. She had believed in him at
the time, but now that she was married and full of sense she quite doubted
whether there was any such person.
'Besides,' she said to Wendy, 'he would be grown up by this time.'
'Oh no, he isn't grown up,' Wendy assured her confidently, 'and he is just my
size.' She meant that he was her size in both mind and body; she didn't know
how she knew it, she just knew it.
Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he smiled pooh-pooh. 'Mark my
words,' he said, 'it is some nonsense Nana has been putting into their heads;
just the sort of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone, and it will blow over.'
But it would not blow over; and soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs. Darling
quite a shock.
Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them. For
instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event happened that when they were in the wood they met their dead father and had a game
with him. It was in this casual way that Wendy one morning made a
disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had been found on the nursery
floor, which certainly were not there when the children went to bed, and Mrs.
Darling was puzzling over them when Wendy said with a tolerant smile:
'I do believe it is that Peter again!'
'Whatever do you mean, Wendy?'
'It is so naughty of him not to wipe,' Wendy said, sighing. She was a tidy child.
She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thought Peter sometimes
came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and played on
his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never woke, so she didn't know how she
knew, she just knew.
'What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the house without
knocking.'
'I think he comes in by the window,' she said.
'My love, it is three floors up.'
'Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, mother?'
It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near the window.
Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so natural to Wendy
that you could not dismiss it by saying she had been dreaming.
'My child,' the mother cried, 'why did you not tell me of this before?'
'I forgot,' said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her breakfast.
Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.
But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling examined them
carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not come from
any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a
candle for marks of a strange foot. She rattled the poker up the chimney and
tapped the walls. She let down a tape from the window to the pavement, and it
was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.
Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.
But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed, the night on
which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be said to have
begun.
On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed. It happened
to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling had bathed them and sung to them
till one by one they had let go her hand and slid away into the land of sleep.
All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and sat
down tranquilly by the fire to sew.
It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting into shirts. The
fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by three night-lights, and
presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling's lap. Then her head nodded, oh, so
gracefully. She was asleep. Look at the four of them, Wendy and Michael over
there, John here, and Mrs. Darling by the fire. There should have been a fourth
night-light.
While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverland had come too
near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He did not alarm her,
for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who
have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.
But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw
Wendy and John and Michael peeping through the gap.
The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was dreaming the
window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on the floor. He was
accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your fist, which darted about
the room like a living thing; and I think it must have been this light that
wakened Mrs. Darling.
She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew at once
that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been there we should have
seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling's kiss. He was a lovely boy, clad in
skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees; but the most entrancing
thing about him was that he had all his first teeth. When he saw she was a
grown-up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.
[CHAPTER 1 is over my novel readers wait for CHAPTER 2]
Nana entered, returned from her evening out. She growled and sprang at the
boy, who leapt lightly through the window. Again Mrs. Darling screamed, this
time in distress for him, for she thought he was killed, and she ran down into
the street to look for his little body, but it was not there; and she looked up,
and in the black night she could see nothing but what she thought was a
shooting star.
She returned to the nursery, and found Nana with something in her mouth,
which proved to be the boy's shadow. As he leapt at the window Nana had
closed it quickly, too late to catch him, but his shadow had not had time to get
out; slam went the window and snapped it off.
You may be sure Mrs. Darling examined the shadow carefully, but it was quite
the ordinary kind.
Nana had no doubt of what was the best thing to do with this shadow. She
hung it out at the window, meaning 'He is sure to come back for it; let us put it
where he can get it easily without disturbing the children.'
But unfortunately Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out at the window;
it looked so like the washing and lowered the whole tone of the house. She
thought of showing it to Mr. Darling, but he was totting up winter greatcoats
for John and Michael, with a wet towel round his head to keep his brain clear,
and it seemed a shame to trouble him; besides, she knew exactly what he
would say: 'It all comes of having a dog for a nurse.'
She decided to roll the shadow up and put it away carefully in a drawer, until a
fitting opportunity came for telling her husband. Ah me!
The opportunity came a week later, on that never-to-be-forgotten Friday. Of
course it was a Friday.
'I ought to have been specially careful on a Friday,' she used to say afterwards
to her husband, while perhaps Nana was on the other side of her, holding her
hand.
'No, no,' Mr. Darling always said, 'I am responsible for it all. I, George
Darling, did it. Mea culpa, mea culpa.' He had had a classical education.
They sat thus night after night recalling that fatal Friday, till every detail of it
was stamped on their brains and came through on the other side like the faces
on a bad coinage.
'If only I had not accepted that invitation to dine at 27,' Mrs. Darling said.
'If only I had not poured my medicine into Nana's bowl,' said Mr. Darling.
'If only I had pretended to like the medicine,' was what Nana's wet eyes said.
'My liking for parties, George.'
'My fatal gift of humour, dearest.'
'My touchiness about trifles, dear master and mistress.'
Then one or more of them would break down altogether; Nana at the thought,
'It's true, it's true, they ought not to have had a dog for a nurse.' Many a time it
was Mr. Darling who put the handkerchief to Nana's eyes.
'That fiend!' Mr. Darling would cry, and Nana's bark was the echo of it, but
Mrs. Darling never upbraided Peter; there was something in the right-hand
corner of her mouth that wanted her not to be. They would sit there in the empty nursery, recalling fondly every smallest
detail of that dreadful evening. It had begun so uneventfully, so precisely like
a hundred other evenings, with Nana putting on the water for Michael's bath
and carrying him to it on her back.
'I won't go to bed,' he had shouted, like one who still believed that he had the
last word on the subject, 'I won't, I won't. Nana, it isn't six o'clock yet. Oh
dear, oh dear, I shan't love you any more, Nana. I tell you I won't be bathed, I
won't, I won't!'
Then Mrs. Darling had come in, wearing her white evening-gown. She had
dressed early because Wendy so loved to see her in her evening-gown, with
the necklace George had given her. She was wearing Wendy's bracelet on her
arm; she had asked for the loan of it. Wendy so loved to lend her bracelet to
her mother.
She had found her two older children playing at being herself and father on the
occasion of Wendy's birth, and John was saying:
'I am happy to inform you, Mrs. Darling, that you are now a mother,' in just
such a tone as Mr. Darling himself may have used on the real occasion.
Wendy had danced with joy, just as the real Mrs. Darling must have done.
Then John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived due to the birth of
a male, and Michael came from his bath to ask to be born also, but John said
brutally that they did not want any more.
Michael had nearly cried. 'Nobody wants me,' he said, and of course the lady
in evening-dress could not stand that.
'I do,' she said, 'I so want a third child.'
'Boy or girl?' asked Michael, not too hopefully.
'Boy.'
Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr. and Mrs. Darling
and Nana to recall now, but not so little if that was to be Michael's last night in
the nursery.
They go on with their recollections.
'It was then that I rushed in like a tornado, wasn't it?' Mr. Darling would say,
scorning himself; and indeed he had been like a tornado.
Perhaps there was some excuse for him. He, too, had been dressing for the
party, and all had gone well with him until he came to his tie. It is an
astounding thing to have to tell, but this man, though he knew about stocks
and shares, had no real mastery of his tie. Sometimes the thing yielded to him
without a contest, but there were occasions when it would have been better for
the house if he had swallowed his pride and used a made-up tie.
This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery with the
crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand.
'Why, what is the matter, father dear?'
'Matter!' he yelled; he really yelled. 'This tie, it will not tie.' He became
dangerously sarcastic. 'Not round my neck! Round the bed-post! Oh yes,
twenty times have I made it up round the bed-post, but round my neck, no! Oh
dear no! begs to be excused!'
He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he went on
sternly, 'I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie is round my neck we
don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I don't go out to dinner to-night, I never
go to the office again, and if I don't go to the office again, you and I starve,
and our children will be flung into the streets.'
Even then Mrs. Darling was placid. 'Let me try, dear,' she said, and indeed that
was what he had come to ask her to do; and with her nice cool hands she tied
his tie for him, while the children stood around to see their fate decided. Some
men would have resented her being able to do it so easily, but Mr. Darling was
far too fine a nature for that; he thanked her carelessly, at once forgot his rage,
and in another moment was dancing round the room with Michael on his back.
'How wildly we romped!' says Mrs. Darling now, recalling it.
'Our last romp!' Mr. Darling groaned.
'O George, do you remember Michael suddenly said to me, "How did you get
to know me, mother?"'
'I remember!'
'They were rather sweet, don't you think, George?'
'And they were ours, ours, and now they are gone.'
The romp had ended with the appearance of Nana, and most unluckily Mr.
Darling collided against her, covering his trousers with hairs. They were not
only new trousers, but they were the first he had ever had with braid on them,
and he had to bite his lip to prevent the tears coming. Of course Mrs. Darling
brushed him, but he began to talk again about its being a mistake to have a dog
for a nurse.
'George, Nana is a treasure.'
'No doubt, but I have an uneasy feeling at times that she looks upon the
children as puppies.'
'Oh no, dear one, I feel sure she knows they have souls.'
'I wonder,' Mr. Darling said thoughtfully, 'I wonder.' It was an opportunity, his
wife felt, for telling him about the boy. At first he pooh-poohed thehe became thoughtful when she showed him the shadow.
'It is nobody I know,' he said, examining it carefully, 'but he does look a
scoundrel.'
'We were still discussing it, you remember,' says Mr. Darling, 'when Nana
came in with Michael's medicine. You will never carry the bottle in your
mouth again, Nana, and it is all my fault.
Strong man though he was, there is no doubt that he had behaved rather
foolishly over the medicine. If he had a weakness, it was for thinking that all
his life he had taken medicine boldly; and so now, when Michael dodged the
spoon in Nana's mouth, he had said reprovingly, 'Be a man, Michael.'
'Won't; won't,' Michael cried naughtily. Mrs. Darling left the room to get a
chocolate for him, and Mr. Darling thought this showed want of firmness.
'Mother, don't pamper him,' he called after her. 'Michael, when I was your age
I took medicine without a murmur. I said "Thank you, kind parents, for giving
me bottles to make me well."'
He really thought this was true, and Wendy, who was now in her night-gown,
believed it also, and she said, to encourage Michael, 'That medicine you
sometimes take, father, is much nastier, isn't it?'
'Ever so much nastier,' Mr. Darling said bravely, 'and I would take it now as an
example to you, Michael, if I hadn't lost the bottle.'
He had not exactly lost it; he had climbed in the dead of night to the top of the
wardrobe and hidden it there. What he did not know was that the faithful Liza
had found it, and put it back on his wash-stand.
'I know where it is, father,' Wendy cried, always glad to be of service. 'I'll
bring it,' and she was off before he could stop her. Immediately his spirits sank
in the strangest way.
'John,' he said, shuddering, 'it's most beastly stuff. It's that nasty, sticky, sweet
kind.'
'It will soon be over, father,' John said cheerily, and then in rushed Wendy with
the medicine in a glass.
'I have been as quick as I could,' she panted.
'You have been wonderfully quick,' her father retorted, with a vindictive
politeness that was quite thrown away upon her. 'Michael first,' he said
doggedly.
'Father first,' said Michael, who was of a suspicious nature.
'I shall be sick, you know,' Mr. Darling said threateningly.
'Come on, father,' said John.
'Hold your tongue, John,' his father rapped out.
Wendy was quite puzzled. 'I thought you took it quite easily, father.'
'That is not the point,' he retorted. 'The point is, that there is more in my glass
than in Michael's spoon.' His proud heart was nearly bursting. 'And it isn't fair;
I would say it though it were with my last breath; it isn't fair.'
'Father, I am waiting,' said Michael coldly.
'It's all very well to say you are waiting; so am I waiting.'
'Father's a cowardy custard.'
'So are you a cowardy custard.'
'I'm not frightened.'
'Neither am I frightened.'
'Well, then, take it.'
'Well, then, you take it.'
Wendy had a splendid idea. 'Why not both take it at the same time?'
'Certainly,' said Mr. Darling. 'Are you ready, Michael?'
Wendy gave the words, one, two, three, and Michael took his medicine, but
Mr. Darling slipped his behind his back.
There was a yell of rage from Michael, and 'O father!' Wendy exclaimed.
'What do you mean by "O father"?' Mr. Darling demanded. 'Stop that row,
Michael. I meant to take mine, but I—I missed it.'
It was dreadful the way all the three were looking at him, just as if they did not
admire him. 'Look here, all of you,' he said entreatingly, as soon as Nana had
gone into the bathroom, 'I have just thought of a splendid joke. I shall pour my
medicine into Nana's bowl, and she will drink it, thinking it is milk!'
It was the colour of milk; but the children did not have their father's sense of
humour, and they looked at him reproachfully as he pouredthe medicine into
Nana's bowl. 'What fun,' he said doubtfully, and they did not dare expose him
when Mrs. Darling and Nana returned.
'Nana, good dog,' he said, patting her, 'I have put a little milk into your bowl,
Nana.'
Nana wagged her tail, ran to the medicine, and began lapping it. Then she
gave Mr. Darling such a look, not an angry look: she showed him the great red
tear that makes us so sorry for noble dogs, and crept into her kennel.
Mr. Darling was frightfully ashamed of himself, but he would not gMr. Darling was frightfully ashamed of himself, but he would not give in. In a
horrid silence Mrs. Darling smelt the bowl. 'O George,' she said, 'it's your
medicine!'
'It was only a joke,' he roared, while she comforted her boys, and Wendy
hugged Nana. 'Much good,' he said bitterly, 'my wearing myself to the bone
trying to be funny in this house.'
And still Wendy hugged Nana. 'That's right,' he shouted. 'Coddle her! Nobody
coddles me. Oh dear no! I am only the breadwinner, why should I be coddled,
why, why, why!'
'George,' Mrs. Darling entreated him, 'not so loud; the servants will hear you.'
Somehow they had got into the way of calling Liza the servants.
'Let them,' he answered recklessly. 'Bring in the whole world. But I refuse to
allow that dog to lord it in my nursery for an hour longer.'
The children wept, and Nana ran to him beseechingly, but he waved her back.
He felt he was a strong man again. 'In vain, in vain,' he cried; 'the proper place
for you is the yard, and there you go to be tied up this instant.'
'George, George,' Mrs. Darling whispered, 'remember what I told you about
that boy.'
Alas, he would not listen. He was determined to show who was master in that
house, and when commands would not draw Nana from the kennel, he lured
her out of it with honeyed words, and seizing her roughly, dragged her from
the nursery. He was ashamed of himself, and yet he did it. It was all owing to
his too affectionate nature, which craved for admiration. When he had tied her
up in the back-yard, the wretched father went and sat in the passage, with his
knuckles to his eyes.
In the meantime Mrs. Darling had put the children to bed in unwonted silence
and lit their night-lights. They could hear Nana barking, and John whimpered,
'It is because he is chaining her up in the yard,' but Wendy was wiser.
'That is not Nana's unhappy bark,' she said, little guessing what was about to
happen; 'that is her bark when she smells danger.'
Danger!
'Are you sure, Wendy?'
'Oh yes.'
Mrs. Darling quivered and went to the window. It was securely fastened. She
looked out, and the night was peppered with stars. They were crowding round
the house, as if curious to see what was to take place there, but she did not
notice this, nor that one or two of the smaller ones winked at her. Yet a
nameless fear clutched at her heart and made her cry, 'Oh, how I wish that I
wasn't going to a party to-night!'
Even Michael, already half asleep, knew that she was perturbed, and he asked,
'Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?'
'Nothing, precious,' she said; 'they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to
guard her children.'
She went from bed to bed singing enchantments over them, and little Michael
flung his arms round her. 'Mother,' he cried, 'I'm glad of you.' They were the
last words she was to hear from him for a long time.
No. 27 was only a few yards distant, but there had been a slight fall of snow,
and Father and Mother Darling picked their way over it deftly not to soil their
shoes. They were already the only persons in the street, and all the stars were
watching them. Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in
anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for
something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the
older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star
language), but the little ones still wonder. They are not really friendly to Peter,
who has a mischievous way of stealing up behind them and trying to blow
them out; but they are so fond of fun that they were on his side to-night, and
anxious to get the grown-ups out of the way. So as soon as the door of 27
closed on Mr. and Mrs. Darling there was a commotion in the firmament, and
the smallest of all the stars in the Milky Way screamed out:
'Now, Peter!'
CHAPTER III
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
For a moment after Mr. and Mrs. Darling left the house the night-lights by the
beds of the three children continued to burn clearly. They were awfully nice
little night-lights, and one cannot help wishing that they could have kept
awake to see Peter; but Wendy's light blinked and gave such a yawn that the
other two yawned also, and before they could close was a fairy, no longer than your hand, but still growing. It was a girl called
Tinker Bell exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through
which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. She was slightly inclined
to embonpoint.
A moment after the fairy's entrance the window was blown open by the
breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in. He had carried Tinker Bell
part of the way, and his hand was still messy with the fairy dust.
'Tinker Bell,' he called softly, after making sure that the children were asleep,
'Tink, where are you?' She was in a jug for the moment, and liking it
extremely; she had never been in a jug before.
'Oh, do come out of that jug, and tell me, do you know where they put my
shadow?'
The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is the fairy language.
You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were tohear it you would
know that you had heard it once before.
Tink said that the shadow was in the big box. She meant the chest of drawers,
and Peter jumped at the drawers, scattering their contents to the floor with
both hands, as kings toss ha'pence to the crowd. In a moment he had recovered
his shadow, and in his delight he forgot that he had shut Tinker Bell up in the
drawer.
If he thought at all, but I don't believe he ever thought, it was that he and his
shadow, when brought near each other, would join like drops of water; and
when they did not he was appalled. He tried to stick it on with soap from the
bathroom, but that also failed. A shudder passed through Peter, and he sat on
the floor and cried.
His sobs woke Wendy, and she sat up in bed. She was not alarmed to see a
stranger crying on the nursery floor; she was only pleasantly interested.
'Boy,' she said courteously, 'why are you crying?'
Peter could be exceedingly polite also, having learned the grand manner at
fairy ceremonies, and he rose and bowed to her beautifully. She was much
pleased, and bowed beautifully to him from the bed.
'What's your name?' he asked.
'Wendy Moira Angela Darling,' she replied with some satisfaction. 'What is
your name?'
'Peter Pan.'
She was already sure that he must be Peter, but it did seem a comparatively
short name.
'Is that all?'
'Yes,' he said rather sharply. He felt for the first time that it was a shortish
name.
'I'm so sorry,' said Wendy Moira Angela.
'It doesn't matter,' Peter gulped.
She asked where he lived.
'Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning.'
'What a funny address!'
Peter had a sinking. For the first time he felt that perhaps it was a funny
address.
'No, it isn't,' he said.
'I mean,' Wendy said nicely, remembering that she was hostess, 'is that what
they put on the letters?'
He wished she had not mentioned letters.
'Don't get any letters,' he said contemptuously.
'But your mother gets letters?'
'Don't have a mother,' he said. Not only had he no mother, but he had not the
slightest desire to have one. He thought them very overrated persons. Wendy,
however, felt at once that she was in the presence of a tragedy.
'O Peter, no wonder you were crying,' she said, and got out of bed and ran to
him.
'I wasn't crying about mothers,' he said rather indignantly. 'I was crying
because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't crying.'
'It has come off?'
'Yes.'
Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she was
frightfully sorry for Peter. 'How awful!' she said, but she could not help
smiling when she saw that he had been trying to stick it on with soap. How
exactly like a boy!
Fortunately she knew at once what to do 'It must be sewn on,' she said, just a
little patronisingly.
'What's sewn?' he asked.
'You're dreadfully ignorant.'
'No, I'm not.'
But she was exulting in his ignorance. 'I shall sew it on for you, my little man,'
she said, though he was as tall as herself; and she got out her housewife, and
sewed the shadow on to Peter's foot.
'I daresay it will hurt a little,' she warned him.
'Oh, I shan't cry,' said Peter, who was already of opinion that he had never
cried in his life. And he clenched his teeth and did not cry; and soon his
shadow was behaving properly, though still a little creased.
'Perhaps I should have ironed it,' Wendy said thoughtfully; but Peter, boylike,
was indifferent to appearances, and he was now jumping about in the wildest
glee. Alas, he had already forgotten that he owed his bliss to Wendy. He
thought he had attached the shadow himself. 'How clever I am,' he crowed
rapturously, 'oh, the cleverness of me!'
It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter was one of his
most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness, there never was a
cockier boy.
But for the moment Wendy was shocked. 'You conceit,' she exclaimed, with
frightful sarcasm; 'of course I did nothing!'
'You did a little,' Peter said carelessly, and continued to dance.
'A little!' she replied with hauteur; 'if I am no use I can at least withdraw'; and
she sprang in the most dignified way into bed and covered her face with the
blankets.
To induce her to look up he pretended to be going away, and when this failed
he sat on the end of the bed and tapped her gently with his foot. 'Wendy,' he
said, 'don't withdraw. I can't help crowing, Wendy, when I'm pleased with
myself.' Still she would not look up, though she was listening eagerly. 'Wendy,'
he continued, in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist,
'Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.'
Now Wendy was every inch a woman, though there were not very many
inches, and she peeped out of the bedclothes.
'Do you really think so, Peter?'
'Yes, I do.'
'I think it's perfectly sweet of you,' she declared, 'and I'll get up again'; and she
sat with him on the side of the bed. She also said she would give him a kiss if
he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and he held out his hand
expectantly.
'Surely you know what a kiss is?' she asked, aghast.
'I shall know when you give it to me,' he replied stiffly; and not to hurt his
night-lights, and in the time we have taken to say this, it has been in all the
drawers in the nursery, looking for Peter's shadow, rummaged the wardrobe
and turned every pocket inside out. It was not really a light; it made this light
by flashing about so quickly, but when it came to rest for a second you saw it