Peter Pan
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
All children, one, up. They soon know that they will up, and the way Wendy was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she another flower and ran with it to her mother. I she must have looked delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her and cried, “Oh, why can’t you like this for ever!” This was all that passed them on the subject, but Wendy that she must up. You always know after you are two. Two is the of the end.
Of they at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the one. She was a lady, with a mind and such a sweet mouth. Her mind was like the boxes, one the other, that come from the East, many you there is always one more; and her sweet mouth had one on it that Wendy get, though there it was, perfectly in the right-hand corner.
The way Mr. Darling her was this: the many who had been boys when she was a girl that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to to her Mr. Darling, who took a and in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, the box and the kiss. He about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy Napoleon have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, the door.
Mr. Darling used to to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but him. He was one of those ones who know about stocks and shares. Of no one knows, but he to know, and he often said stocks were up and were in a way that would have any woman respect him.
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at she the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a Brussels was missing; but by and by whole out, and of them there were pictures of without faces. She them when she should have been up. They were Mrs. Darling’s guesses.
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.
For a week or two after Wendy came it was they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the of Mrs. Darling’s bed, her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to it, come what might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece of paper, and if she him with he had to at the again.
“Now don’t interrupt,” he would of her.
“I have one 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 in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven—who is that moving?—eight nine seven, and seven—don’t speak, my own—and the you to that man who came to the door—quiet, child—dot and 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 we can, George,” she cried. But she was in Wendy’s favour, and he was the of the two.
“Remember mumps,” he her almost threateningly, and off he again. “Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I it will be more like thirty shillings—don’t speak—measles one five, German a guinea, makes two fifteen six—don’t your finger—whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings”—and so on it went, and it added up each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with to twelve six, and the two of as one.
There was the same over John, and Michael had a squeak; but were kept, and soon, you might have the three of them going in a to Miss Fulsom’s Kindergarten school, by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have just so, and Mr. Darling had a for being like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had to no one in particular until the Darlings her. She had always children important, however, and the Darlings had with her in Kensington Gardens, where she most of her time into perambulators, and was much by careless nursemaids, she to their homes and of to their mistresses. She proved to be a of a nurse. How she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of the night if one of her the cry. Of her was in the nursery. She had a for when a is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs around your throat. She to her last day in old-fashioned like leaf, and of over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in to see her the children to school, walking by their when they were well behaved, and them into line if they strayed. On John’s days she once his sweater, and she an in her mouth in case of rain. There is a room in the of Miss Fulsom’s where the wait. They sat on forms, while Nana on the floor, but that was the only difference. They to her as of an social to themselves, and she their light talk. She visits to the from Mrs. Darling’s friends, but if they did come she off Michael’s and put him into the one with braiding, and out Wendy and a at John’s hair.
No possibly have been more correctly, and Mr. Darling it, yet he sometimes the talked.
He had his position in the city to consider.
Nana also him in another way. He had sometimes a that she did not him. “I know she you tremendously, George,” Mrs. Darling would him, and then she would to the children to be to father. Lovely followed, in which the only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join. Such a she looked in her long skirt and maid’s cap, though she had sworn, when engaged, that she would see ten again. The of those romps! And of all was Mrs. Darling, who would so that all you see of her was the kiss, and then if you had at her you might have got it. There was a family until the of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling of Peter when she was up her children’s minds. It is the of every good mother after her children are asleep to in their minds and put for next morning, into their proper places the many articles that have the day. If you keep (but of you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would it very to watch her. It is like up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, over some of your contents, where on earth you had this thing up, making sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her as if it were as as a kitten, and that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the and with which you to have been up small and at the of your mind and on the top, aired, are spread out your thoughts, for you to put on.
I don’t know you have a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes of other parts of you, and your own map can interesting, but catch them trying to a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but going all the time. There are lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with of colour here and there, and and rakish-looking in the offing, and and lairs, and who are mostly tailors, and through which a river runs, and with six brothers, and a fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also day at school, religion, fathers, the pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, that take the dative, chocolate day, into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the or they are another map through, and it is all confusing, as nothing will still.
Of the Neverlands a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a with over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a with over it. John in a on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a by its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they still in a you say of them that they have each other’s nose, and so forth. On these magic children at play are for their coracles. We too have been there; we can still the of the surf, though we shall land no more.
Of all the Neverland is the and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with one and another, but 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 you go to sleep it very real. That is why there are night-lights.
Occasionally in her through her children’s minds Mrs. Darling she not understand, and of these the most was the word Peter. She of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and Michael’s minds, while Wendy’s to be all over with him. The name out in than any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling she that it had an appearance.
“Yes, he is cocky,” Wendy with regret. Her mother had been her.
“But who is he, my pet?”
“He is Peter Pan, you know, mother.”
At Mrs. Darling did not know, but after into her she just a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies. There were odd about him, as that when children died he part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened. She had in him at the time, but now that she was married and full of she there was any such person.
“Besides,” she said to Wendy, “he would be up by this time.”
“Oh no, he isn’t up,” Wendy her confidently, “and he is just my size.” She meant that he was her size in mind and body; she didn’t know how she knew, she just it.
Mrs. Darling Mr. Darling, but he pooh-pooh. “Mark my words,” he said, “it is some nonsense Nana has been into their heads; just the of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone, and it will over.”
But it would not over and soon the boy gave Mrs. Darling a shock.
Children have the without being by them. For instance, they may to mention, a week after the event happened, that when they were in the they had met their father and had a game with him. It was in this way that Wendy one a revelation. Some of a tree had been on the floor, which were not there when the children to bed, and Mrs. Darling was over them when Wendy said with a smile:
“I do it is that Peter again!”
“Whatever do you mean, Wendy?”
“It is so of him not to his feet,” Wendy said, sighing. She was a tidy child.
She in a matter-of-fact way that she Peter sometimes came to the in the night and sat on the of her and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she woke, so she didn’t know how she knew, she just knew.
“What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can into the house without knocking.”
“I think he comes in by the window,” she said.
“My love, it is three up.”
“Were not the at the of the window, mother?”
It was true; the had been very near the window.
Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all so natural to Wendy that you not 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 to her breakfast.
Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.
But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling them very carefully; they were leaves, but she was sure they did not come from any tree that in England. She about the floor, at it with a for marks of a foot. She the up the and the walls. She let a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a of thirty feet, without so much as a 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 of these children may be said to have begun.
On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed. It to be Nana’s off, and Mrs. Darling had them and to them till one by one they had let go her hand and away into the land of sleep.
All were looking so safe and that she at her now and sat by the fire to sew.
It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was into shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the by three night-lights, and presently the on Mrs. Darling’s lap. Then her 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 that the Neverland had come too near and that a boy had through from it. He did not her, for she she had him in the of many who have no children. Perhaps he is to be in the of some mothers also. But in her he had rent the that the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and Michael through the gap.
The by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was the window of the open, and a boy did on the floor. He was by a light, no than your fist, which about the room like a thing and I think it must have been this light that Mrs. Darling.
She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she at once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been there we should have that he was very like Mrs. Darling’s kiss. He was a boy, in and the that out of trees but the most thing about him was that he had all his teeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he the little pearls at her.
