Title: Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
Author: Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew)
Language: English
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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.





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