"I think it's perfectly sweet of you," she declared, "and I'll get
up again," and she sat with him on the side of the bed. She also
said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know
what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.

  "Surely you know what a kiss is?" she asked, aghast.

  "I shall know when you give it to me," he replied stiffly, and not
to hurt his feelings she gave him a thimble.

  "Now," said he, "shall I give you a kiss?" and she replied with a
slight primness, "If you please." She made herself rather cheap by
inclining her face toward him, but he merely dropped an acorn button
into her hand, so she slowly returned her face to where it had been
before, and said nicely that she would wear his kiss on the chain
round her neck. It was lucky that she did put it on that chain, for it
was afterwards to save her life.

  When people in our set are introduced, it is customary for them to
ask each other's age, and so Wendy, who always liked to do the correct
thing, asked Peter how old he was. It was not really a happy
question to ask him; it was like an examination paper that asks
grammar, when what you want to be asked is Kings of England.

  "I don't know," he replied uneasily, "but I am quite young." He
really knew nothing about it, he had merely suspicions, but he said at
a venture, "Wendy, I ran away the day I was born."

  Wendy was quite surprised, but interested; and she indicated in
the charming drawing-room manner, by a touch on her night-gown, that
he could sit nearer her.

  "It was because I heard father and mother," he explained in a low
voice, "talking about what I was to be when I became a man." He was
extraordinarily agitated now. "I don't want ever to be a man," he said
with passion. "I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. So
I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among
the fairies."

  She gave him a look of the most intense admiration, and he thought
it was because he had run away, but it was really because he knew
fairies. Wendy had lived such a home life that to know fairies
struck her as quite delightful. She poured out questions about them,
to his surprise, for they were rather a nuisance to him, getting in
his way and so on, and indeed he sometimes had to give them a
hiding. 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 skipping
about, and that was the beginning of fairies."

  Tedious talk this, but being a stay-at-home she liked it.

  "And so," he went on good-naturedly, "there ought to be one fairy
for every boy and girl."

  "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."

  Really, he thought they had now talked enough about fairies, and
it struck him that Tinker Bell was keeping very quiet. "I can't
think where she has gone to," he said, rising, and he called Tink by
name. Wendy's heart went flutter with a sudden thrill.

  "Peter," she cried, clutching him, "you don't mean to tell me that
there is a fairy in this room!"

  "She was here just now," he said a little impatiently. "You don't
hear her, do you?" and they both listened.

  "The only sound I hear," said Wendy, "is like a tinkle of bells."

  "Well, that's Tink, that's the fairy language. I think I hear her
too."

  The sound came from the chest of drawers, and Peter made a merry
face. No one could ever look quite so merry as Peter, and the
loveliest of gurgles was his laugh. He had his first laugh still.

  "Wendy," he whispered gleefully, "I do believe I shut her up in
the drawer!"

  He let poor Tink out of the drawer, and she flew about the nursery
screaming with fury. "You shouldn't say such things," Peter
retorted. "Of course I'm very sorry, but how could I know you were
in the drawer?"

  Wendy was not listening to him. "O Peter," she cried, "if she
would only stand still and let me see her!"

  "They hardly ever stand still," he said, but for one moment Wendy
saw the romantic figure come to rest on the cuckoo clock. "O the
lovely!" she cried, though Tink's face was still distorted with
passion.

  "Tink," said Peter amiably, "this lady says she wishes you were