She poured out questions about them, to his surprise, for they were rather a nuisance to him, getting in his way and so on. Indeed he sometimes had to flick them out of his way, which sent them cartwheeling all over the place. Still, he liked them on the whole, and he told her about the beginning of fairies.

“You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went fluttering about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”

“And so,” he went on good-naturedly, “There ought to be at least a hundred fairies for every boy and girl’s first laugh.”

“Ought to be? Isn’t there?”

“No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don’t believe in fairies, and every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies,’ there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.”

Wendy pondered this grand process for a moment, and a questioning thought occurred to her. “But what about bad fairies?” she asked.

Really, he thought they had now talked enough about fairies, and Peter said shortly, “Well, of course they are all the same.”

They were together in the armchair by this time, and Wendy plied him with more questions.

“If you don’t live in Kensington Gardens now—”

“Sometimes I do still. Especially at Easter, when all the silly fat children lose chocolate eggs amongst the flowers, and we steal them away from under their noses.”

“But where do you live mostly?”

“With the lost boys.”

“Who are they?”

“They are the children who fall out of their prams when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland, for the Kensington fairies won’t keep them. I’m captain.”

“What fun it must be! I’m glad I’m coming with you.”

“Why, whatever gave you that idea?” Peter said.

Wendy widened her jaguar eyes at him. “We shook on it,” she said innocently, “and I sewed you back together using my own hair, so now you’re rather stuck with me.”

“For how long?” demanded Peter, “I already have Tinker Bell following me around, I don’t need another silly girl!”

There was an angry chiming from the fairy, who had returned from her explorations of the gazunder, and been listening with enthusiasm to all this talk of fairies. She had, I am afraid to say, been preening under the attention, even if it was only second-hand. Tink was like that. It is just possible that she was entirely as vain as Peter was cocky.

“Forever,” Wendy said flatly, “just like Tink, only not so sparkly. And you needn’t say girls in that tone of voice, either. I’m as handy as any silly lost boy.”

“But you’d be lonely,” said cunning Peter, “for you see, we have no girls in the lost troupe.”

“Then I shall be the first,” she said with some spirit, and then; “why are there no girls?”

“Girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.”

This flattered Wendy immensely, but she was by no means distracted from her aim. “I think,” she said, “it is perfectly contradictory the way you talk about girls; for you see we’re so much cleverer than mere lost boys; if a girl wants to be lost, she will go out of her way to make it happen, not find herself lost by mistake. You ought to be grateful a girl would want to join you, with all your adventures with pirates,” her voice dropped a little in yearning, “and Indians, and wild animals.”

For reply Peter rose and kicked John out of bed, blankets and all: one kick. This seemed to Wendy rather forward for a first meeting, and she told him loudly that he was not captain in her house. However, John continued to sleep so placidly on the floor that she allowed him to remain there.

“Kicking him won’t dissuade me one jot,” she said stoutly – “indeed, it’s quite the thing I do to them regularly.” She indicated her unfortunate brothers with a princely disregard.

“Why, I’ll kick him all the way into next week if it means you leave me alone.”

“Well, it won’t. I’m quite set, you realise. I won’t stay here a moment longer, to be turned into a silly, bleating adult. I won’t stay, even for the stories!”

“Do you know very many stories?” Peter asked, hesitating with a kind of longing.

“Buckets full. None of them any good, but I know all sorts of military triumphs, and they’re far better to tell.”

Peter admitted that he came to the nursery window not to see her but to listen to stories. “You see, I don’t know any stories. None of the lost boys knows any stories of any sort.”

“How perfectly awful,” Wendy said.

“Do you know,” Peter asked “Why birds nest in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories. O Wendy, your mother was telling you such a lovely story. It’s why I snuck away here from Neverland, to come and listen to her while you snuggled in close by the fire. But then the tide changed again, and I was drawn back.”

“Let me come with you,” she entreated, “for you promised it, and we’re joined now – if you want to leave me behind, you’ll have to cut your shadow off and be foresworn a liar.”

Peter hesitated.

“Also, I will try and tell some stories, in the quiet times between fighting pirates and burying the dead.”

Those were her precise words, and he came back with a greedy look in his eyes which ought to have alarmed her, but did not.

“O, the thousands of stories I could tell to the boys!” she cried, and then Peter gripped her by the hand and began to draw her toward the window, the medicine bag bumping against her leg.

“Let me go!” she ordered him, as contrary a cat as ever scorned fresh cream. Also, the window was open, and she knew from past experience how it yawned down into the cobbled street, some thirty yards below.

“Wendy, you must come with me and join the other boys.”

“Slow down, Peter! I can’t fly yet!”

“I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back, and say funny things to the stars and make them giggle – they flicker so!”

“O, how jolly!”

“And, Wendy, in Neverland there are mermaids.”

“Mermaids! With tails?”

“Such long, shiny tails!”

“O,” cried Wendy, “to see a mermaid!”

He had become cruel, and was now teasing her with all the things she wanted and lacked. “Wendy,” he said, “How we should all respect you, in Neverland. You’d be the only storyteller. If only you can fly there…”

She was wriggling her body in distress. It was quite as if she were trying to float off the nursery floor. “Peter, teach me how to fly, come along, do!”

In all this ruckus, John and Michael were roused from slumber.

“Wendy, who is this?” demanded John, and: “did I fall out of bed?”

Peter and Tinker Bell both gurgled a little laugh. Wendy put her hands on her hips.

“Go back to sleep John, and you too, Michael. I’m talking with Peter Pan, and he is going to take me away to Neverland.”

“How awfully fascinating!” John cried. “Peter, would you take us too?”

“If you like,” he said indifferently, and Wendy stamped her foot, sulking a little for having to share her adventure.

Michael was up by this time also, looking as sharp as a knife with six blades and a saw, but Peter suddenly raised a hand for silence. Their faces assumed the craftiness of children listening for sounds from the grown-up world. All was as still as salt, which meant all was right. No, stop! Everything was wrong. Nana, who had been barking in distress all the evening, was quiet now. It was her silence they had heard.

“Out with the light! Hide! Quick!” cried John, taking command for the only time in his short life so far. And thus when Liza entered, holding Nana, the nursery seemed quite its normal self, very dark, and you would have sworn you heard its three wicked inmates breathing angelically as they slept. They were really doing it artfully from behind the window curtains. Tinker Bell had slipped inside Wendy’s sleeve to hid her glow from the grown-ups, and Wendy could feel the dragonfly quiver of her wings against the inside of her wrist.

Liza was in a bad temper, for she was mixing a batch of Christmas puddings in the kitchen, and had been drawn from them, with a raisin still on her cheek, by Nana’s absurd suspicions. She thought the best way of getting a little quiet was to take Nana to the nursery for a moment, but in custody of course.

“There, you suspicious brute,” she said, not sorry that Nana was in disgrace. “They are perfectly safe, aren’t they? Every one of the little wretches sound asleep in bed. Listen to their breathing.”

Here Michael, encouraged by his success, breathed so loudly that they were nearly detected. Nana knew that kind of breathing, and she tried to drag herself out of Liza’s clutches.

But Liza was preoccupied and unobservant. “No more of it, Nana,” she said sternly, pulling her out of the room. “I warn you if you bark again I shall go straight for master and missus and bring them home from the party, and then, oh, won’t master beat you, just. He might even let you go, and find another nurse for the children. A proper nurse,” as she hauled her down the stairs. “A human nurse,” as she tied the rope firm, imprisoning the unhappy dog in the yard.

Do you think Nana ceased to bark? Bring Mr. and Mrs. Darling home from the party? Why, that was exactly what she wanted! Do you think she cared whether she was whipped or cast out so long as her charges were safe?

Unfortunately Liza returned to her puddings, turning up the wireless so as to drown out Nana’s howls, and Nana, seeing that no help would come from her, strained and strained at the leash until at last she broke her collar. In another moment she had burst into the dining room of 27 and flung up her paws to heaven, whining in distress. Mr. and Mrs. Darling knew at once that something terrible was happening in the nursery, and without any more than a shouted good-bye to their hostess they rushed into the street.

But it is ten minutes since three scoundrels and their ringleader had been breathing deceitfully behind the curtains, and Peter Pan can do a great deal in ten minutes.

We now return to the nursery.

“It’s all right,” John announced, emerging from his hiding-place. “I say, Peter, can you really fly?”

Instead of troubling to answer him Peter flew around the room, taking in the mantelpiece on the way.

“How topping!” said Wendy, clapping her hands.

“How amazing!” cried John (he did not like to use slang).

“Yes, I’m amazing, O, I am wondrous!” said Peter, forgetting his manners again and executing a barrel roll of triumph in the air.

It looked delightfully easy, and they tried it first from the floor and then from the beds, but they always went down instead of up. After some discussion, they agreed that bouncing did not count. Only the real thing would do.

“I say, how do you do it?” asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a practical boy, already showing some of his father’s unimaginative lumpishness. Wendy often felt rather sorry for him, when she wasn’t busy being annoyed.

“You just think lovely wonderful thoughts,” Peter explained, with a deadpan face, “and they lift you up in the air.”

Once again, he showed them. Then he did it slowly, and quickly, until the children each cried that they had it; of course they did not. Not one of them could fly an inch, though even Michael was in words of two syllables or more, and Peter did not know A from Z.

Of course Peter had been taking his amusement at their expense, for no one can fly unless fairy dust has been blown on them. Fortunately, as we have mentioned, one of his hands was messy with it, and he blew some on each of them, with the most superb results.

“Now just wiggle your shoulders this way,” he said, “then let go of the floor.”

They were all on their beds, and gallant Michael let go first. He did not quite mean to let go, but he did it, and immediately he was borne across the room.

“I flewed!” he screamed while still in mid-air.

John let go and met Wendy above the kennel.

“O, how fantastic!”

“O, ripping!”

“Look at me!”

“Look at me!”

“Look at me!”

They were not nearly so elegant as Peter. They could not help kicking a little, but their heads were bobbing against the ceiling, and there is almost nothing so delicious as that. Peter gave Wendy a hand at first, but had to desist, Tink was so indignant.

Up and down they went, and round and round. “Smashing,” was Wendy’s word for it.

“I say,” cried Wendy, “why are we waiting around here? Let’s all go out!”

Of course it was to this that Peter had been luring them.

Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long it took him to do a billion miles. But John hesitated.

“There are pirates,” said Peter encouragingly.

“Pirates,” cried John, seizing his Sunday hat, “then let us go at once!”

It was just at this moment that Mr. and Mrs. Darling hurried with Nana out of 27. They ran into the middle of the street to look up at the nursery window; it was open, the room was ablaze with light, and most heart-stopping of all, they could see in the shadows on the curtain three little figures in night attire circling round and round, not on the floor but up in the air.

No, not three figures, four!

In a tremble they opened the front door. Mr. Darling would have rushed upstairs, but Mrs. Darling signed him to go softly. She even tried to make her heart go softly, that they might sneak upon the children and the intruder.

They would have reached the nursery in time had it not been that the little stars were maintaining a lookout for Peter. Once again the stars blew the window open, and that smallest star of all called out:

“Run, Peter!”

Then Peter knew that there was not a moment to lose. “Come,” he cried imperiously, and soared out at once into the night, followed by Wendy, Michael and John.

Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery seconds too late. The birds had flown from the nest, joyously free.