letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she
felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.

  "Yes, he is rather cocky," Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother
had been questioning her.

  "But who is he, my pet?"

  "He is Peter Pan, you know, mother."

  At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her
childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with
the fairies. There were odd stories about him, as that when children
died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be
frightened. She had believed in him at the time, but now that she
was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was
any such person.

  "Besides," she said to Wendy, "he would be grown up by this time."

  "Oh no, he isn't grown up," Wendy assured her confidently, "and he
is just my size." She meant that he was her size in both mind and
body; she didn't know how she knew it, she just knew it.

  Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he smiled pooh-pooh. "Mark
my words," he said, "it is some nonsense Nana has been putting into
their heads; just the sort of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone,
and it will blow over."

  But it would not blow over, and soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs.
Darling quite a shock.

  Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by
them. For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the
event happened, that when they were in the wood they met their dead
father and had a game with him. It was in this casual way that Wendy
one morning made a disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had
been found on the nursery floor, which certainly were not there when
the children went to bed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them when
Wendy said with a tolerant smile:

  "I do believe it is that Peter again!"

  "Whatever do you mean, Wendy?"

  "It's so naughty of him not to wipe," Wendy said, sighing. She was a
tidy child.

  She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thought Peter
sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of
her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never
woke, so she didn't know how she knew, she just knew.

  "What nonsense you talk, precious! No one can get into the house
without knocking."

  "I think he comes in by the window," she said.

  "My love, it is three floors up."

  "Weren't the leaves at the foot of the window, mother?"

  It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near the window.

  Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so
natural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she had
been dreaming.

  "My child," the mother cried, "why did you not tell me of this
before?"

  "I forgot," said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her
breakfast.

  Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

  But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling examined
them carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did
not come from any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the
floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She
rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down
a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of
thirty feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.

  Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.

  But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed,
the night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children
may be said to have begun.

  On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed.
It happened to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling had bathed them
and sung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid
away into the land of sleep.

  All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now
and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.

  It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting into
shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by three