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TLDREN'S ROOM
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THE NEW Y
j'.iC LIBRARY
TILDclN
^
PETER PAN
KENSINGTON
GARDENS
FROM '
THE- LITTLE-WHITE-BIRD
BY
J-M-BARRIE
A- NEW- EDITION
ILLUSTRATED -BY
ARTHUR- RACKHAM
LONDON
HODDER • &-STOUGHTON
'.
• ....
V5
TO SYLVIA AND ARTHUR LLEWELYN DAVIES
AND THEIR BOYS (MY BOYS)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PACE
THE GRAND TOUR OF THE GARDENS . i
CHAPTER II
PETER PAN ..... . . .18
CHAPTER III
THE THRUSH'S NEST ....... 36
CHAPTER IV
LOCK-OUT TIME ........ 5*
CHAPTER V
THE LITTLE HOUSE .... 76
CHAPTER VI
PETER'S GOAT
DAVID
PAGE
COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS
I . Frontispiece
*. •* The Kensington Gardens are in London, where
the King lives ...... w
3. The lady with the balloons, who sits just outside . viii
4. In the Broad Walk you meet all the people who
are worth knowing ... I
5. The Hump, which is the part of the Broad Walk
where all the big races are run . . 2
4. There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense
of fun as a fallen leaf ... 6
7. The Serpentine is a lovely lake, and there is a
drowned forest at the bottom of it. If you
peer over the edge you can see the trees all
growing upside down, and they say that at
night there are also drowned stars in it
b v
Illustrations
PACE
8. The island on which all the birds are born that
become baby boys and girls . . . .10
9. Old Mr. Salford was a crab-apple of an old gentle-
man who wandered all day in the Gardens . 14
10. Away he flew, right over the houses to the
Gardens . . . . . . .16
1 1 . The fairies have their tiffs with the birds . . 1 8
12. When he heard Peter's voice he popped in alarm
behind a tulip . . . . . .22
13. A band of workmen, who were sawing down,a
toadstool, rushed away, leaving their tools
behind them ...... 24
14. Put his strange case before old Solomon Caw . 26
15. Peter screamed out, ' Do it again!' and with great
good-nature they did it several times . . 30
1 6. A hundred flew off with the string, and Peter
clung to the tail . . . . . 32
17. After this the birds said that they would help
him no more in his mad enterprise ... 34
1 8. 'Preposterous!' cried Solomon in a rage . . 38
19. For years he had been quietly filling his stocking . 40
vi
Illustrations
PAGE
20. When you meet grown-up people in the Gardens
who puff and blow as if they thought them-
selves bigger than they are .... 42
21. He passed under the bridge and came within full
sight of the delectable Gardens ... 46
-*e. There now arose a mighty storm, and he was
tossed this way and that ..... 48
23. Fairies are all more or less in hiding until dusk . 50
34. When they think you are not looking they skip
along pretty lively ...... 54
*5- But if you look, and they fear there is no time
to hide, they stand quite still pretending to be
flowers ..... 56
26. The fairies are exquisite dancers . . 58
27. These tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the
board on a ball night . . 62
28. Linkmen running in front carrying winter cherries 64
29. When her Majesty wants to know the time . 66
30. The fairies sit round on mushrooms, and at first
they are well behaved . 7°
ft 3-* . Butter is got from the roots of old trees 72
vii
Illustrations
PACE
32. Wallflower juice is good for reviving dancers
who fall to the ground in a fit . . .74
33. Peter Pan is the fairies' orchestra ... 78
34. They all tickled him on the shoulder ... 80
35. One day they were overheard by a fairy . . 82
36. The little people weave their summer curtains
from skeleton leaves ..... 86
37. An afternoon when the Gardens were white with
snow . . . . . . . .88
38. She ran to St. Cover's Well and hid ... 90
39. An elderberry hobbled across the walk, and stood
chatting with some young quinces ... 94
40. A chrysanthemum heard her, and said pointedly,
' Hoity-toity, what is this? ' .... 96
41. They warned her ...... 98
42. Queen Mab, who rules in the Gardens . . .102
43. Shook his bald head and murmured, ' Cold, quite
cold' . . . . . . . .104
44. Fairies never say, 'We feel happy': what they
say is, 'We feel dancev' . . . . .106
45. Looking very undancey indeed . . . 110
viii
Illustrations
PAGE
46. ' My Lord Duke,' said the physician elatedly,
' I have the honour to inform your excellency
that your grace is in love ' . . . .112
47. Building the house for Maimie . . . .114
48. If the bad ones among the fairies happen to be
out . . . . . . .116
49. They will certainly mischief you . . .120
50. I think that quite the most touching sight in
the Gardens is the two tombstones of Walter
Stephen Matthews and Phoebe Phelps . .122
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
PAGE
David ..... ... v
Kensington Gardens ...... xi
Porthos 12
One of the Paths that have Made Themselves . . 13
Tailpiece to 'The Grand Tour of the Gardens' . . 17
Headpiece to 'Peter Pan' . . . . .18
The birds on the island never got used to him. His
oddities tickled them every day .... 29
Tailpiece to 'Peter Pan ' . . . . . -35
Headpiece to 'The Thrush's Nest' .... 36
Tailpiece to 'The Thrush's Nest ' .' . . -51
Headpiece to ' Lock-out Time ' . . . 52
They are so cunning . . . . . -53
A fairy ring . . . . . . . .61
Tailpiece to ' Lock-out Time ' 75
Headpiece to ' The Little House ' . . . 76
There was a good deal going on in the Baby Walk . 85
She escorted them up the Baby Walk and back again . 91
Tailpiece to 'The Little House' . . . .107
Headpiece to 'Peter's Goat' . . . . .108
Tailpiece to ' Peter's Goat ' . . . . -123
KENSINGTON GARDENS
THE GRAND TOUR OF THE GARDENS
YOU must see for yourselves that it will be
difficult to follow Peter Pan's adventures
unless you are familiar with the Kensington
Gardens. They are in London, where the King
lives, and I used to take David there nearly every
day unless he was looking decidedly flushed. No
child has ever been in the whole of the Gardens,
because it is so soon time to turn back. The
reason it is soon time to turn back is that, if you
are as small as David, you sleep from twelve to one.
If your mother was not so sure that you sleep from
twelve to one, you could most likely see the whole
of them.
The Gardens are bounded on one side by a
never-ending line of omnibuses, over which your
nurse has such authority that if she holds up her
finger to any one of them it stops immediately.
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
She then crosses with you in safety to the other
side. There are more gates to the Gardens than
one gate, but that is the one you go in at, and
before you go in you speak to the lady with the
balloons, who sits just outside. This is as near to
being inside as she may venture, because, if she
were to let go her hold of the railings for one
moment, the balloons would lift her up, and she
would be flown away. She sits very squat, for the
balloons are always tugging at her, and the strain
has given her quite a red face. Once she was a
new one, because the old one had let go, and David-
was very sorry for the old one, but as she did let
go, he wished he had been there to see.
The Gardens are a tremendous big place, with
millions and hundreds of trees ; and first you come
to the Figs, but you scorn to loiter there, for the
Figs is the resort of superior little persons, who are
forbidden to mix with the commonalty, and is so
named, according to legend, because they dress in
full fig. These dainty ones are themselves con-
temptuously called Figs by David and other heroes,
and you have a key to the manners and customs of
this dandiacal section of the Gardens when I tell
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
you that cricket is called crickets here. Occasionally
a rebel Fig climbs over the fence into the world,
and such a one was Miss Mabel Grey, of whom I
shall tell you when we come to Miss Mabel Grey's
gate. She was the only really celebrated Fig.
We are now in the Broad Walk, and it is as
much bigger than the other walks as your father is
bigger than you. David wondered if it began little,
and grew and grew, until it was quite grown up,
and whether the other walks are its babies, and he
drew a picture, which diverted him very much, of
the Broad Walk giving a tiny walk an airing in a
perambulator. In the Broad Walk you meet all
the people who are worth knowing, and there is
usually a grown-up with them to prevent them
going on the damp grass, and to make them stand
disgraced at the corner of a seat if they have been
mad-dog or Mary-Annish. To be Mary-Annish is
to behave like a girl, whimpering because nurse
won't carry you, or simpering with your thumb in
your mouth, and it is a hateful quality ; but to be
mad-dog is to kick out at everything, and there is
some satisfaction in that.
If I were to point out all the notable places as
3
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
we pass up the Broad Walk, it would be time to
turn back before we reach them, and I simply wave
my stick at Cecco Hewlett's Tree, that memorable
spot where a boy called Cecco lost his penny, and,
looking for it, found twopence. There has been a
good deal of excavation going on there ever since.
Farther up the walk is the little wooden house in
which Marmaduke Perry hid. There is no more
awful story of the Gardens than this of Marmaduke
Perry, who had been Mary-Annish three days in
succession, and was sentenced to appear in the
Broad Walk dressed in his sister's clothes. He hid
in the little wooden house, and refused to emerge
until they brought him knickerbockers with
pockets.
You now try to go to the Round Pond, but
nurses hate it, because they are not really manly,
and they make you look the other way, at the Big
Penny and the Baby's Palace. She was the most
celebrated baby of the Gardens, and lived in the
palace all alone, with ever so many dolls, so people
rang the bell, and up she got out of her bed, though
it was past six o'clock, and she lighted a candle and
opened the door in her nighty, and then they all
4
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
cried with great rejoicings, ' Hail, Queen of Eng-
land ! ' What puzzled David most was how she
knew where the matches were kept. The Big
o
Penny is a statue about her.
Next we come to the Hump, which is the part
of the Broad Walk where all the big races are run ;
and even though you had no intention of running
you do run when you come to the Hump, it is
such a fascinating, slide-down kind of place. Often
you stop when you have run about half-way down
it, and then you are lost ; but there is another little
wooden house near here, called the Lost House,
and so you tell the man that you are lost and then
he finds you. It is glorious fun racing down the
Hump, but you can't do it on windy days because
then you are not there, but the fallen leaves do it
instead of you. There is almost nothing that has
such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.
From the Hump we can see the gate that is
called after Miss Mabel Grey, the Fig I promised
to tell you about. There were always two nurses
with her, or else one mother and one nurse, and
for a long time she was a pattern-child who always
coughed off the table and said, ' How do you do ? '
5
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
to the other Figs, and the only game she played at
was flinging a ball gracefully and letting the nurse
bring it back to her. Then one day she tired of it
all and went mad-dog, and, first, to show that she
really was mad-dog, she unloosened both her boot-
laces and put out her tongue east, west, north, and
south. She then flung her sash into a puddle and
danced on it till dirty water was squirted over her
frock, after which she climbed the fence and had a
series of incredible adventures, one of the least of
which was that she kicked off both her boots. At
last she came to the gate that is now called after
her, out of which she ran into streets David and I
have never been in though we have heard them
roaring, and still she ran on and would never again
have been heard oi had not her mother jumped into
a 'bus and thus overtaken her. It all happened, I
should say, long ago, and this is not the Mabel
Grey whom David knows.
Returning up the Broad Walk we have on our
right the Baby Walk, which is so full of peram-
bulators that you could cross from side to side
stepping on babies, but the nurses won't let you do
it. From this walk a passage called Bunting's
6
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
Thumb, because it is that length, leads into Picnic
Street, where there are real kettles, and chestnut-
blossom falls into your mug as you are drinking.
Quite common children picnic here also, and the
blossom falls into their mugs just the same.
Next comes St. Govor's Well, which was full of
water when Malcolm the Bold fell into it. He
was his mother's favourite, and he let her put her
arm round his neck in public because she was a
widow ; but he was also partial to adventures, and
liked to play with a chimney-sweep who had killed
a good many bears. The sweep's name was Sooty,
and one day, when they were playing near the
well, Malcolm fell in and would have been drowned
had not Sooty dived in and rescued him ; and the
water had washed Sooty clean, and he now stood
revealed as Malcolm's long-lost father. So Malcolm
would not let his mother put her arm round his
neck any more.
Between the well and the Round Pond are the
cricket pitches, and frequently the choosing of sides
exhausts so much time that there is scarcely any
cricket. Everybody wants to bat first, and as soon
as he is out he bowls unless you are the better
7
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
wrestler, and while you are wrestling with him the
fielders have scattered to play at something else.
The Gardens are noted for two kinds of cricket :
boy cricket, which is real cricket with a bat, and
girl cricket, which is with a racquet and the
governess. Girls can't really play cricket, and
when you are watching their futile efforts you make
funny sounds at them. Nevertheless, there was a
very disagreeable incident one day when some
forward girls challenged David's team, and a dis-
turbing creature called Angela Clare sent down so
many yorkers that— However, instead of telling
you the result of that regrettable match I shall pass
on hurriedly to the Round Pond, which is the
wheel that keeps all the gardens going.
It is round because it is in the very middle of
the Gardens, and when you are come to it you
never want to go any farther. You can't be good
all the time at the Round Pond, however much
you try. You can be good in the Broad Walk all
the time, but not at the Round Pond, and the
reason is that you forget, and, when you remember,
you are so wet that you may as well be wetter.
There are men who sail boats on the Round Pond,
8
\
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
such big boats that they bring them in barrows, and
sometimes in perambulators, and then the baby has
to walk. The bow-legged children in the Gardens
are those who had to walk too soon because their
father needed the perambulator.
You always want to have a yacht to sail on the
Round Pond, and in the end your uncle gives you
one ; and to carry it to the pond the first day is
splendid, also to talk about it to boys who have no
uncle is splendid, but soon you like to leave it at
home. For the sweetest craft that slips her moorings
in the Round Pond is what is called a stick-boat,
because she is rather like a stick until she is in the
water and you are holding the string. Then as you
walk round, pulling her, you see little men running
about her deck, and sails rise magically and catch the
breeze, and you put in on dirty nights at snug
harbours which are unknown to. the lordly yachts.
Night passes in a twink, and again your rakish
craft noses for the wind, whales spout, you glide
over buried cities, and have brushes with pirates,
and cast anchor on coral isles. You are a solitary
boy while all this is taking place, for two boys
together cannot adventure far upon the Round
B 9
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
Pond, and though you may talk to yourself through-
out the voyage, giving orders and executing them
with despatch, you know not, when it is time to go
home, where you have been or what swelled your
sails ; your treasure-trove is all locked away in your
hold, so to speak, which will be opened, perhaps,
by another little boy many years afterwards.
But those yachts have nothing in their hold.
Does any one return to this haunt of his youth
because of the yachts that used to sail it ? Oh no.
Jt is the stick-boat that is freighted with memories.
The yachts are toys, their owner a fresh-water
mariner ; they can cross and recross a pond only
while the stick-boat goes to sea. You yachtsmen
with your wands, who think we are all there to
gaze on you, your ships are only accidents of this
place, and were they all to be boarded and sunk by
the ducks, the real business of the Round Pond
would be carried on as usual.
Paths from everywhere crowd like children to
the pond. Some of them are ordinary paths, which
have a rail on each side, and are made by men with
their coats off, but others are vagrants, wide at one
spot, and at another so narrow that you can stand
10
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
astride them. They are called Paths that have
Made Themselves, and David did wish he could see
them doing it. But, like all the most wonderful
things that happen in the Gardens, it is done, we
concluded, at night after the gates are closed. We
ha\j also decided that the paths make themselves
because it is their only chance of getting to the
Round Pond.
One of these gypsy paths comes from the place
where the sheep get their hair cut. When David
shed his curls at the hairdresser's, I am told, he
said good-bye to them without a tremor, though
his mother has never been quite the same bright
creature since ; so he despises the sheep as they
run from their shearer, and calls out tauntingly,
{ Cowardly, cowardly custard ! ' But when the
man grips them between his legs David shakes a fist
at him for using such big scissors. Another startling
moment is when the man turns back the grimy
wool from the sheep's shoulders and they look
suddenly like ladies in the stalls of a theatre. The
sheep are so frightened by the shearing that it makes
them quite white and thin, and as soon as they are
set free they begin to nibble the grass at once, quite
1 1
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
anxiously, as if they feared that they would never
be worth eating. David wonders whether they
know each other, now that they are so different, and
if it makes them fight with the wrong ones. They
are great fighters, and thus so unlike country sheep
that every year they give my St. Bernard dog,
Porthos, a shock. He can
make a field of country
sheep fly by merely an-
nouncing his approach,
but these town sheep come
toward him with no pro-
mise of gentle entertain-
ment, and then a light from last year breaks upon
Porthos. He cannot with dignity retreat, but he
stops and looks about him as if lost in admiration
of the scenery, and presently he strolls away with
a fine indifference and a glint at me from the
corner of his eye.
The Serpentine begins near here. It is a lovely
lake, and there is a drowned forest at the bottom of
it. If you peer over the edge you can see the trees
all growing upside down, and they say that at night
there are also drowned stars in it. If so, Peter Pan
12
*r '
OXE OF THE PATHS THAT
HAVE MADE THEMSELVES
.
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
sees them when he is sailing across the lake in the
Thrush's Nest. A small part only of the Serpentine
is in the Gardens, for soon it passes beneath a bridge
to far away where the island is on which all the
birds are born that become baby boys and girls.
No one who is human, except Peter Pan (and he is
only half human), can land on the island, but you
may write what you want (boy or girl, dark or fair)
on a piece of paper, and then twist it into the shape
of a boat and slip it into the water, and it reaches
Peter Pan's island after dark.
We are on the way home now, though of
course, it is all pretence that we can go to so many
of the places in one day. I should have had to be
carrying David long ago, and resting on every seat
like old Mr. Salford. That was what we called
him, because he always talked to us of a lovely
place called Salford where he had been born. He
was a crab-apple of an old gentleman who wandered
all day in the Gardens from seat to seat trying to
fall in with somebody who was acquainted with the
town of Salford, and when we had known him for
a year or more we actually did meet another aged
solitary who had once spent Saturday to Monday in
15
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
Salford. He was meek and timid, and carried his
address inside his hat, and whatever part of London
he was in search of he always went to Westminster
Abbey first as a starting-point. Him we carried in
triumph to our other friend, with the story of that
Saturday to Monday, and never shall I forget the
gloating joy with which Mr. Salford leapt at him.
They have been cronies ever since, and I notice
that Mr. Salford, who naturally does most of the
talking, keeps tight grip of the other old man's
coat.
The two last places before you come to our
gate are the Dogs' Cemetery and the chaffinch's
nest, but we pretend not to know what the Dogs'
Cemetery is, as Porthos is always with us. The
nest is very sad. It is quite white, and the way we
found it was wonderful. We were having another
look among the bushes for David's lost worsted >all,
and instead of the ball we found a lovely nest ade
of the worsted, and containing four eggs, <rith
scratches on them very like David's handwriting, so
we think they must have been the mother's love-
letters to the little ones inside. Every day we were
in the Gardens we paid a call at the nest, taking
16
i
The Grand Tour of the Gardens
care that no cruel boy should see us, and we
dropped crumbs, and soon the bird knew us as
friends, and sat in the nest looking at us kindly
with her shoulders hunched up. But one day when
we went there were only two eggs in the nest, and
the next time there were none. The saddest part
of it was that the poor little chaffinch fluttered
about the bushes, looking so reproachfully at us
that we knew she thought we had done it ; and
though David tried to explain to her, it was so long
since he had spoken the bird language that I fear
she did not understand. He and I left the Gardens
that day with our knuckles in our eyes.
II
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 grand-
mother 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
18
Teter Tan
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.
20
Teter Tan
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 —
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
21
Teter Tan
cows, drawing water, and so on, and the sigh, 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 n so
refreshing as usual, so next he tried a puddle and
he fell flop into it. When a real bird falls 'i flop,
he spreads out his feathers and pecks them ary, 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, ' 1 never
was out on such a cold night ' ; he had reall- been
out on colder nights when he was a bird, out, of
course, as everybody knows, what seems » warm
night to a bird is a cold night to a boy in c. night-
gown. 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 som thing he
22
Teter Tan
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,
23
Teter Tan
doors barricaded, and from the grounds of Queen
Mab's palace came the rub-a-dub of drums, showing
that the royal guard had been called out. A regi-
ment of Lancers came charging down the Broad
Walk, armed with holly-leaves, with which they
jag 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 ap-
proached 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 this 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
24
Teter Tan
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, yo^i cease for ever 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.
c Look at your nightgown, 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.
D 25
Teter Tan
' 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.'
26
Teter Tan
1 And never even go to the Kensington Gardens ?'
Peter asked tragically.
c 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.
1 Then I shan'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 for ever. The crafty mother-
birds, when they tired of sitting on their eggs, used
to get the young ones to break their shells a day
27
Teter Tan
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 nightgown 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.
28
THE BIRDS ON THE ISLAND
NEVER GOT USED TO HIM.
HIS ODDITIES TICKLED THEM
EVERY DAY
Teter Tan
To be easily pleased, for instance, and always to
be really doing something, and to think that what-
ever 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 ringers.
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 an 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
Teter Tan
catching handfuls of the shine of the moon, and he
put them all in his pipe and played them so beauti-
fully 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
32
Teter Tan
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
E 33
Teter Tan
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
34
Teter Tan
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 been 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.
Ill
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
36
The ThrusKs J(est
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 plaything.
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,
37
The Thrush's
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 gain 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
38
The Thrush's
nuts, sixteen crusts, a pen-wiper, and a boot-lace.
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 im-
pressed 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, c We don't build
nests to hold water, but to hold eggs,' and then the
39
The Thrush's
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.'
1 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.
4 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 :
40
The Thrush's J(est
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,
4 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 the year when they should have
F 41
The Thrush's
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
house-tops 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 afterwards on the island
as the Sparrows' Year ; and so, when you meet
grown-up people in the Gardens 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.
42
The Thrush's
And at last, after months of labour, the boat
was finished. O the glory 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
43
The Thrush's
out of his nightgown, and though it was still rather
like a nightgown 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 as 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 backwards by
a contrary breeze, to his no small peril. He now
let go the sail, with the result that he was drifted
towards the far shore, where are black shadows he
44
The Thrush's
knew not the dangers of, but suspected them, and
so once more hoisted his nightgown 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
45
The Thrush's
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 com-
pany 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, ancj 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 nightgown. Whereupon, they straight-
way 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
46
The Thrush's J{est
«)
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 dare say we should see him hoisting his
nightgown and sailing or paddling towards 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 are all more or less in
hiding until dusk, and so know nothing, and though
47
The Thrush's
the birds pretended that they could tell him a great
deal, when the time for telling came, it was wonder-
ful 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 him-
self. 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
The Thrush's
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
G 49
The Thrush's
had gone, and he never saw any other 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 mis-
takes ? 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
5°
The ThrusJis
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.
IV
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
52
THEY ARE SO CUNNING
Lock-out Time
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 bluebells, and so on. They like crocus
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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
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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
hand-cart with the flowers in it, and were quite
surprised to find the bed occupied. < Pity to lift
them hyacinths,' said the one man. l 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
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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
any one 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 it 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
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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 stand-
up time, (for instance, or to wake up when she
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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,
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A FAIRY RING
Lock-out Time
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 afterwards
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 mush-
rooms 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.
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But there is also a way of rinding 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.
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Lock-out 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 tablecloth, and that is how
they get their tablecloth.
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 well-behaved and always cough off
the table, and so on, but after a bit they are not so
well-behaved and stick their ringers into the butter,
which is got from the roots of old trees, and the
really horrid ones crawl over the tablecloth 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 every-
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Lock-out Time
body 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 wallflower and the other the juice
of Solomon's Seal. Wallflower juice is good for
reviving dancers who fall to the ground in a fit, and
Solomon's Seal 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.
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*
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* 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, thougli 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,'
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the Queen said, ' but I can't open the door for
you.'
4 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 housetops.
It was so delicious that instead of flying straight
to his own 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
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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 nightgown 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.
' O 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
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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 should 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
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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 he next 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, ' O
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
Lock-out Time
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,
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Lock-out Time
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 en-
couragement 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
K 73
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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
shoulders 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, 4 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
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m:. ,_
Lock-out Time
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 win-
dow it is Lock-out Time. The iron bars are up
for life.
V
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
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The Little House
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 every one 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 light, so that is nothing.
But Maimie Mannering was the famous one for
whom the house was first built.
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The Little House
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
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The Little House
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 be-
seeches her, c 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, O 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
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The Little House
often did with splendid firmness, that one day he
meant to remain behind in the Gardens after the
gates were closed.
' O Tony,' she would say with awful respect,
* but the fairies will be so angry ! '
' I dare say,' 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,
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The Little House
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 to-day ? ' 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 to-morrow 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
L 81
The Little House
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 shan't be able to do it.'
Maimie admired him more than ever for being
afraid of nothing but their ayah, when there were
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The Little House
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 1 ' 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. Cover'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 crept over the
Gardens, and hundreds of people passed out, includ-
ing 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
83
The Little House
legs and up her arms and dropped into her heart.
It was the stillness of the Gardens. Then she
heard cla?ig, 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
84
THERE WAS A GOOD DEAL GOING
ON IN THE BABY WALK
The Little House
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 gar-
ments 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, where 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 trunks and
they shut like umbrellas, deluging the little plants
beneath with snow. ' O you naughty, naughty
87
The Little House
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 a chrysanthemum heard her, and 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.'
88
The Little House
At this they clapped their hands, and she
escorted them up 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 walk-
ing 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 loth 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.
M 89
The Little House
' Oh, la ! ' replied the oak bitingly, ' how deli-
ciously 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 would face
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 irritat-
ing doctor, who was his private physician, felt the
Duke's heart immediately after any lady was pre-
sented, 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
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SHE ESCORTED THEM
UP THE BABY WALK
AND BACK AGAIN
The Little House
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
93
The Little House
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 ad-
mired 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
94
The Little House
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, c 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
95
The Little House
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 ama Jng and even irritating to her that
the Duke of O ristmas 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 for-
ward 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
96
The Little House
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 undancey indeed,
when sudden laughter broke out among the on-
lookers, 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
N 97
The Little House
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 he 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
The Little House
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,
' O 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
99
The Little House
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 un-
pleasant ! ' and so on, but the pursuit was delayed
100
The Little House
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
echoed, ' 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
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The Little House
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,
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The Little House
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 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 said 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 !
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The Little House
' 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.
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The Little House
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,
4 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 won-
dered 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 how ever, 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.
o 105
The Little House
' O you darling ! O you sweet ! O 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 re-
mained 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 light 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
1 06
p
The Little House
putting her ringers 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.
VI
PETER'S GOAT
MAIMIE felt quite shy, but Peter knew not
what shy was.
' I hope you have had a good night,' he
said earnestly.
* Thank you,' she replied, ' I was so cosy and
warm. But you ' — and she looked at his nakedness
awkwardly — ' don't you feel the least bit cold ? '
Now cold was another word Peter had forgotten,
so he answered, ' I think not, but I may be wrong :
you see I am rather ignorant. I am not exactly a
boy ; Solomon says I am a Betwixt-and-Between.'
1 08
Peters Goat
1 So that is what it is called,' said Maimie
thoughtfully.
' That 's not my name,' he explained, ' my name
is Peter Pan.'
' Yes, of course,' she said, ' I know, everybody
knows.'
You can't think how pleased Peter was to learn
that all the people outside the gates knew about him.
He begged Maimie to tell him what they knew and
what they said, and she did so. They were sitting
by this time on a fallen tree ; Peter had cleared off
the snow for Maimie, but he sat on a snowy bit
himself.
' Squeeze closer,' Maimie said.
* What is that ? ' he asked, and she showed him,
and then he did it. They talked together and he
found that people knew a great deal about him, but
not everything, not that he had gone back to his
mother and been barred out, for instance, and he
said nothing of this to Maimie, for it still humiliated
him.
4 Do they know that I play games exactly like
real boys ? ' he asked very proudly. ' O Maimie,
please tell them ! ' But when he revealed how he
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Teters Goat
played, by sailing his hoop on the Round Pond, and
so on, she was simply horrified.
'All your ways of playing,' she said with her
big eyes on him, ' are quite, quite wrong, and not in
the least like how boys play.'
Poor Peter uttered a little moan at this, and he
cried for the first time for I know not how long.
Maimie was extremely sorry for him, and lent him
her handkerchief, but he didn't know in the least
what to do with it, so she showed him, that is to say,
she wiped her eyes, and then gave it back to him,
saying, ( Now you do it,' but instead of wiping his
own eyes he wiped hers, and she thought it best to
pretend that this was what she had meant.
She said out of pity for him, ' I shall give you
a kiss if you like,' but though he once knew, he
had long forgotten what kisses are, and he replied,
' Thank you,' and held out his hand, thinking she
had offered to put something into it. This was a
great shock to her, but she felt she could not explain
without shaming him, so with charming delicacy she
gave Peter a thimble which happened to be in her
pocket, and pretended that it was a kiss. Poor little
boy ! he quite believed her, and to this day he wears
I IO
- • .—
Teters Goat
it on his finger, though there can be scarcely any
one who needs a thimble so little. You see, though
still a tiny child, it was really years and years since
he had seen his mother, and I dare say the baby who
had supplanted him was now a man with whiskers.
But you must not think that Peter Pan was a boy
to pity rather than to admire ; if Maimie began by
thinking this, she soon found she was very much
mistaken. Her eyes glistened with admiration when
he told her of his adventures, especially of how he
went to and fro between the island and the Gardens
in the Thrush's Nest.
' How romantic ! ' Maimie exclaimed, but this
was another unknown word, and he hung his head
thinking she was despising him.
' I suppose Tony would not have done that ? '
he said very humbly.
* Never, never ! ' she answered with conviction,
' he would have been afraid.'
' What is afraid ? ' asked Peter longingly. He
thought it must be some splendid thing. ' I do
wish you would teach me how to be afraid, Maimie,'
he said.
* I believe no one could teach that to you,' she
1 1 1
Teters Goat
answered adoringly, but Peter thought she meant
that he was stupid. She had told him about Tony
and of the wicked thing she did in the dark to
frighten him (she knew quite well that it was wicked),
but Peter misunderstood her meaning and said,
4 Oh, how I wish I was as brave as Tony ! '
It quite irritated her. ' You are twenty thou-
sand times braver than Tony,' she said ; ' you are
ever so much the bravest boy I ever knew.'
He could scarcely believe she meant it, but
when he did believe he screamed with joy.
' And if you want very much to give me a kiss,'
Maimie said, ' you can do it.'
Very reluctantly Peter began to take the thimble
off his finger. He thought she wanted it back.
' I don't mean a kiss,' she said hurriedly, ' I
mean a thimble.'
' What 's that ? ' Peter asked.
' It 's like this,' she said, and kissed him.
' I should love to give you a thimble,' Peter
said gravely, so he gave her one. He gave her
quite a number of thimbles, and then a delightful
idea came into his head. ' Maimie,' he said, ' will
you marry me ? '
I 12
Teters Goat
Now, strange to tell, the same idea had come
at exactly the same time into Maimie's head. ' I
should like to,' she answered, ' but will there be
room in your boat for two ? '
' If you squeeze close,' he said eagerly.
( Perhaps the birds would be angry ? '
He assured her that the birds would love to
have her, though I am not so certain of it myself.
Also that there were very few birds in winter. ' Of
course they might want your clothes,' he had to
admit rather falteringly.
She was somewhat indignant at this.
4 They are always thinking of their nests,' he
said apologetically, ( and there are some bits of
you '-r- he stroked the fur on her pelisse — c that
would excite them very much.'
' They shan't have my fur,' she said sharply.
* No,' he said, still fondling it, however, ' no.
O Maimie,' he said rapturously, * do you know
why I love you ? It is because you are like a
beautiful nest.'
Somehow this made her uneasy. * I think you
are speaking more like a bird than a boy now,' she
said, holding back, and indeed he was even looking
p 113
Teters Goat
rather like a bird. ' After all,' she said, ' you are
only a Betwixt-and-Between.' But it hurt him so
much that she immediately added, ' It must be a
delicious thing to be.'
' Come and be one, then, dear Maimie,' he
implored her, and they set off for the boat, for it
was now very near Open-Gate time. ' And you
are not a bit like a nest,' he whispered to please
her.
* But I think it is rather nice to be like one,'
she said in a woman's contradictory way. ' And,
Peter, dear, though I can't give them my fur, I
wouldn't mind their building in it. Fancy a nest
in my neck with little spotty eggs in it ! O Peter,
how perfectly lovely ! '
But as they drew near the Serpentine, she
shivered a little, and said, ' Of course I shall go and
see mother often, quite often. It is not as if I was
saying good-bye for ever to mother, it is not in the
least like that.'
' Oh no,' answered Peter, but in his heart he
knew it was very like that, and he would have told
her so had he not been in a quaking fear of losing
her. He was so fond of her, he felt he could not
114
Teters Goat
live without her. * She will forget her mother in
time, and be happy with me,' he kept saying to
himself, and he hurried her on, giving her thimbles
by the way.
But even when she had seen the boat and
exclaimed ecstatically over its loveliness, she still
talked tremblingly about her mother. ' You know
quite well, Peter, don't you,' she said, 'that I
wouldn't come unless I knew for certain I could
go back to mother whenever I want to ? Peter,
say it.'
He said it, but he could no longer look her in
the face.
' If you are sure your mother will always want
you,' he added rather s.ourly.
' The idea of mother's not always wanting me ! '
Maimie cried, and her face glistened.
' If she doesn't bar you out,' said Peter huskily.
' The door,' replied Maimie, ' will always,
always be open, and mother will always be waiting
at it for me.'
' Then,' said Peter, not without grimness, ' step
in, if you feel so sure of her,' and he helped Maimie
into the Thrush's Nest.
Teters Goat
' But why don't you look at me ? ' she asked,
taking him by the arm.
Peter tried hard not to look, he tried to push
off, then he gave a great gulp and jumped ashore
and sat down miserably in the snow.
She went to him. ' What is it, dear, dear
Peter ? ' she said, wondering.
4 O Maimie,' he cried, ' it isn't fair to take you
with me if you think you can go back ! Your
mother ' — he gulped again — * you don't know them
as well as I do.'
And then he told her the woeful story of how
he had been barred out, and she gasped all the time.
1 But my mother,' she said, ' my mother '
4 Yes, she would,' said Peter, { they are all the
same. I dare say she is looking for another one
already.'
Maimie said aghast, ' I can't believe it. You
see, when you went away your mother had none,
but my mother has Tony, and surely they are
satisfied when they have one.'
Peter replied bitterly, ' You should see the
letters Solomon gets from ladies who have six.'
Just then they heard a grating creak^ followed
n(
Peters Goat
by creak, creak^ all round the Gardens. It was the
Opening of the Gates, and Peter jumped nervously
into his boat. He knew Maimie would not come
with him now, and he was trying bravely not to
cry. But Maimie was sobbing painfully.
' If I should be too late,' she said in agony, ' O
Peter, if she has got another one already ! '
Again he sprang ashore as if she had called him
back. ' I shall come and look for you to-night,'
he said, squeezing close, ' but if you hurry away I
think you will be in time.'
Then he pressed a last thimble on her sweet
little mouth, and covered his face with his hands so
that he might not see her go.
4 Dear Peter ! ' she cried.
' Dear Maimie ! ' cried the tragic boy.
She leapt into his arms, so that it was a sort of
fairy wedding, and then she hurried away. Oh,
how she hastened to the gates ! Peter, you may be
sure, was back in the Gardens that night as soon as
Lock-out sounded, but he found no Maimie, and
so he knew she had been in time. For long he
hoped that some night she would come back to
him ; often he thought he saw her waiting for
117
Teters Goat
him by the shore of the Serpentine as his bark drew
to land, but Maimie never went back. She wanted
to, but she was afraid that if she saw her dear
Betwixt-and-Between again she would linger with
him too long, and besides the ayah now kept a
sharp eye on her. But she often talked lovingly of
Peter, and she knitted a kettle-holder for him, and
one day when she was wondering what Easter
present he would like, her mother made a suggestion.
' Nothing,' she said thoughtfully, ' would be so
useful to him as a goat.'
' He could ride on it,' cried Maimie, ' and play
on his pipe at the same time.'
' Then,' her mother asked, ' won't you give
him your goat, the one you frighten Tony with at
night ? '
' But it isn't a real goat,' Maimie said.
4 It seems very real to Tony,' replied her mother.
( It seems frightfully real to me too,' Maimie
admitted, ' but how could I give it to Peter ? '
Her mother knew a way, and next day, accom-
panied by Tony (who was really quite a nice boy,
though of course he could not compare), they went
to the Gardens, and Maimie stood alone within a
118
Teter's Goat
fairy ring, and then her mother, who was a rather
gifted lady, said —
' My daughter ; tell me, if you can,
What have you got for Peter Pan ? '
To which Maimie replied —
' / have a goat for him to ride,
Observe me cast it far and wide.'
She then flung her arms about as if she were sowing
seed, and turned round three times.
Next Tony said —
' If P. doth find it waiting here,
Wilt ne'er again make me to fear ? '
And Maimie answered —
' By dark or light I fondly swear
Never to see goats anywhere. '
She also left a letter to Peter in a likely place,
explaining what she had done, and begging him to
ask the fairies to turn the goat into one convenient
for riding on. Well, it all happened just as she
hoped, for Peter found the letter, and of course
nothing could be easier for the fairies than to turn
119
TPetefs Goat
the goat into a real one, and so that is how Peter
got the goat on which he now rides round the
Gardens every night playing sublimely on his pipe.
And Maimie kept her promise, and never frightened
Tony with a goat again, though I have heard that
she created another animal. Until she was quite a
big girl she continued to leave presents for Peter in
the Gardens (with letters explaining how humans
play with them), and she is not the only one who
has done this. David does it, for instance, and he
and I know the likeliest place for leaving them in,
and we shall tell you if you like, but for mercy's sake
don't ask us before Porthos, for he is so fond of toys
that, were he to find out the place, he would take
every one of them.
Though Peter still remembers Maimie he is
become as gay as ever, and often in sheer happiness
he jumps off his goat and lies kicking merrily on the
grass. Oh, he has a joyful time ! But he has still
a vague memory that he was a human once, and it
makes him especially kind to the house-swallows
when they visit the island, for house-swallows are the
spirits of little children who have died. They always
build in the eaves of the houses where they lived
120
Tetefs Goat
when they were humans, and sometimes they try to
fly in at a nursery window, and perhaps that is why
Peter loves them best of all the birds.
And the little house ? Every lawful night (that
is to say, every night except ball nights) the fairies
now build the little house lest there should be a
human child lost in the Gardens, and Peter rides the
marches looking for lost ones, and if he finds them
he carries them on his goat to the little house, and
when they wake up they are in it, and when they
step out they see it. The fairies build the house
merely because it is so pretty, but Peter rides round
in memory of Maimie, and because he still loves to
do just as he believes real boys would do.
But you must not think that, because somewhere
among the trees the little house is twinkling, it is a
safe thing to remain in the Gardens after Lock-out
time. If the bad ones among the fairies happen to
be out that night they will certainly mischief you,
and even though they are not, you may perish of
cold and dark before Peter Pan comes round. He
has been too late several times, and when he sees he
is too late he runs back to the Thrush's Nest for his
paddle, of which Maimie had told him the true use,
Q 121
Peter's Goat
and he digs a grave for the child and erects a little
tombstone, and carves the poor thing's initials on it.
He does this at once because he thinks it is what real
boys would do, and you must have noticed the little
stones, and that there are always two together. He
puts them in twos because they seem less lonely.
I think that quite the most touching sight in the
Gardens is the two tombstones of Walter Stephen
Matthews and Phoebe Phelps. They stand together
at the spot where the parish of Westminster St. Mary's
is said to meet the parish of Paddington. Here Peter
found the two babes, who had fallen unnoticed from
their perambulators, Phoebe aged thirteen months
and Walter probably still younger, for Peter seems
to have felt a delicacy about putting any age on his
stone. They lie side by side, and the simple inscrip-
tions read —
w.
St. M.
and
*3a
P.P.
1841.
David sometimes places white flowers on these
two innocent graves.
But how strange for parents, when they hurry
122
Teters Goat
into the Gardens at the opening of the gates looking
for their lost one, to find the sweetest little tomb-
stone instead. I do hope that Peter is not too ready
with his spade. It is all rather sad.
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