Nana,

" good dog," he said, patting her, "I have put a little
milk into your bowl, Nana."

Nana wagged her tail, ran to the medicine, and began lapping
it. Then she gave Mr. Darling such a look, not an angry look:
she showed him the great red tear that makes us so sorry for
noble dogs, and crept into her kennel.

Mr. Darling was frightfully ashamed of himself, but he would
not give in. In a horrid silence Mrs. Darling smelt the bowl.
"O George," she said, "it's your medicine!"

"It was only a joke," he roared, while she comforted her boys,
and Wendy hugged Nana. "Much good," he said bitterly, "my
wearing myself to the bone trying to be funny in this house."

There was a yell of rage from Michael, and "O father!" Wendy
exclaimed.

"What do you mean by `O father'?" Mr. Darling demanded. "Stop
that row, Michael. I meant to take mine, but I -- I missed it."

It was dreadful the way all the three were looking at him, just
as if they did not admire him. "Look here, all of you," he said
entreatingly, as soon as Nana had gone into the bathroom. "I
have just thought of a splendid joke. I shall pour my medicine
into Nana's bowl, and she will drink it, thinking it is milk!"

It was the colour of milk; but the children did not have their
father's sense of humour, and they looked at him reproachfully as
he poured the medicine into Nana's bowl. "What fun!" he said
doubtfully, and they did not dare expose him when Mrs. Darling
and Nana returned.

"Father, I am waiting," said Michael coldly.

"It's all very well to say you are waiting; so am I waiting."

"Father's a cowardly custard."

"So are you a cowardly custard."

"I'm not frightened."

"Neither am I frightened."

"Well, then, take it."

"Well, then, you take it."

Wendy had a splendid idea. "Why not both take it at the same
time?"

"Certainly," said Mr. Darling. "Are you ready, Michael?"

Wendy gave the words, one, two, three, and Michael took his
medicine, but Mr. Darling slipped his behind his back.

"I have been as quick as I could," she panted.

"You have been wonderfully quick," her father retorted, with a
vindictive politeness that was quite thrown away upon her.
"MIchael first," he said doggedly.

"Father first," said Michael, who was of a suspicious nature.

"I shall be sick, you know," Mr. Darling said threateningly.

"Come on, father," said John.

"Hold your tongue, John," his father rapped out.

Wendy was quite puzzled. "I thought you took it quite easily,
father."

"That is not the point," he retorted. "The point is, that
there is more in my glass that in Michael's spoon." His proud
heart was nearly bursting. "And it isn't fair: I would say it
though it were with my last breath; it isn't fair."

"Ever so much nastier," Mr. Darling said bravely, "and I would
take it now as an example to you, Michael, if I hadn't lost the
bottle."

He had not exactly lost it; he had climbed in the dead of night
to the top of the wardrobe and hidden it there. What he did not
know was that the faithful Liza had found it, and put it back on
his wash-stand.

"I know where it is, father," Wendy cried, always glad to be of
service. "I'll bring it," and she was off before he could stop
her. Immediately his spirits sank in the strangest way.

"John," he said, shuddering, "it's most beastly stuff. It's
that nasty, sticky, sweet kind."

"It will soon be over, father," John said cheerily, and then in
rushed Wendy with the medicine in a glass.

"Won't; won't!" Michael cried naughtily. Mrs. Darling left the
room to get a chocolate for him, and Mr. Darling thought this
showed want of firmness.

"Mother, don't pamper him," he called after her. "Michael,
when I was your age I took medicine without a murmur. I said,
`Thank you, kind parents, for giving me bottles to make we
well.'"

He really thought this was true, and Wendy, who was now in her
night-gown, believed it also, and she said, to encourage
Michael, "That medicine you sometimes take, father, is much
nastier, isn't it?"

"We were still discussing it, you remember," says Mr. Darling,
"when Nana came in with Michael's medicine. You will never carry
the bottle in your mouth again, Nana, and it is all my fault."

Strong man though he was, there is no doubt that he had behaved
rather foolishly over the medicine. If he had a weakness, it was
for thinking that all his life he had taken medicine boldly, and
so now, when Michael dodged the spoon in Nana's mouth, he had
said reprovingly, "Be a man, Michael."

"George, Nana is a treasure."

"No doubt, but I have an uneasy feeling at times that she
looks upon the children as puppies.

"Oh no, dear one, I feel sure she knows they have souls."

"I wonder," Mr. Darling said thoughtfully, "I wonder." It was
an opportunity, his wife felt, for telling him about the boy. At
first he pooh-poohed the story, but he became thoughtful when she
showed him the shadow.

"It is nobody I know," he said, examining it carefully, "but it
does look a scoundrel."

The romp had ended with the appearance of Nana, and most
unluckily Mr. Darling collided against her, covering his trousers
with hairs. They were not only new trousers, but they were the
first he had ever had with braid on them, and he had had to bite
his lip to prevent the tears coming. Of course Mrs. Darling
brushed him, but he began to talk again about its being a mistake
to have a dog for a nurse.

Even then Mrs.

Darling was placid. "Let me try, dear," she
said, and indeed that was what he had come to ask her to do, and
with her nice cool hands she tied his tie for him, while the
children stood around to see their fate decided. Some men would
have resented her being able to do it so easily, but Mr. Darling
had far too fine a nature for that; he thanked her carelessly, at
once forgot his rage, and in another moment was dancing round the
room with Michael on his back.

"How wildly we romped!" says Mrs. Darling now, recalling it.

"Our last romp!" Mr. Darling groaned.

"O George, do you remember Michael suddenly said to me, `How
did you get to know me, mother?'"

"I remember!"

"They were rather sweet, don't you think, George?"

"And they were ours, ours! and now they are gone."

"Matter!" he yelled; he really yelled. "This tie, it will not
tie." He became dangerously sarcastic. "Not round my neck!
Round the bed-post! Oh yes, twenty times have I made it up round
the bed-post, but round my neck, no! Oh dear no! begs to be
excused!"

He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he
went on sternly, "I warn you of this, mother, that unless this
tie is round my neck we don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I
don't go out to dinner to-night, I never go to the office again,
and if I don't go to the office again, you and I starve, and our
children will be flung into the streets."

"Boy."

Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr.
and Mrs. Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if
that was to be Michael's last night in the nursery.

They go on with their recollections.

"It was then that I rushed in like a tornado, wasn't it?" Mr.
Darling would say, scorning himself; and indeed he had been like
a tornado.

Perhaps there was some excuse for him. He, too, had been
dressing for the party, and all had gone well with him until he
came to his tie. It is an astounding thing to have to tell, but
this man, though he knew about stocks and shares, had no real
mastery of his tie. Sometimes the thing yielded to him without a
contest, but there were occasions when it would have been better
for the house if he had swallowed his pride and used a made-up
tie.

This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery
with the crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand.

"Why, what is the matter, father dear?"

She had found her two older children playing at being herself
and father on the occasion of Wendy's birth, and John was saying:

"I am happy to inform you, Mrs. Darling, that you are now a
mother," in just such a tone as Mr. Darling himself may have used
on the real occasion.

Wendy had danced with joy, just as the real Mrs. Darling must
have done.

Then John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived due
to the birth of a male, and Michael came from his bath to ask to
be born also, but John said brutally that they did not want any
more.

Michael had nearly cried. "Nobody wants me," he said, and of
course the lady in the evening-dress could not stand that.

"I do," she said, "I so want a third child."

"Boy or girl?" asked Michael, not too hopefully.

They would

sit there in the empty nursery, recalling fondly
every smallest detail of that dreadful evening. It had begun so
uneventfully, so precisely like a hundred other evenings, with
Nana putting on the water for Michael's bath and carrying him to
it on her back.

"I won't go to bed," he had shouted, like one who still
believed that he had the last word on the subject, "I won't, I
won't. Nana, it isn't six o'clock yet. Oh dear, oh dear, I
shan't love you any more, Nana. I tell you I won't be bathed, I
won't, I won't!"

Then Mrs. Darling had come in, wearing her white evening-gown.
She had dressed early because Wendy so loved to see her in her
evening-gown, with the necklace George had given her. She was
wearing Wendy's bracelet on her arm; she had asked for the loan
of it. Wendy loved to lend her bracelet to her mother.

If only

"I had pretended to like the medicine," was what Nana's
wet eyes said.

"My liking for parties, George."

"My fatal gift of humour, dearest."

"My touchiness about trifles, dear master and mistress."

Then one or more of them would break down altogether; Nana at
the thought, "It's true, it's true, they ought not to have had a
dog for a nurse." Many a time it was Mr. Darling who put the
handkerchief to Nana's eyes.

"That fiend!" Mr. Darling would cry, and Nana's bark was the
echo of it, but Mrs. Darling never upbraided Peter; there was
something in the right-hand corner of her mouth that wanted her
not to call Peter names.

The opportunity came

a week later, on that never-to-be-
forgotten Friday. Of course it was a Friday.

"I ought to have been specially careful on a Friday," she used
to say afterwards to her husband, while perhaps Nana was on the
other side of her, holding her hand.

"No, no," Mr. Darling always said, "I am responsible for it
all. I, George Darling, did it. MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA." He had
had a classical education.

They sat thus night after night recalling that fatal Friday,
till every detail of it was stamped on their brains and came
through on the other side like the faces on a bad coinage.

"If only I had not accepted that invitation to dine at 27,"
Mrs. Darling said.

"If only I had not poured my medicine into Nana's bowl," said
Mr. Darling.

But unfortunately

Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out
at the window, it looked so like the washing and lowered the
whole tone of the house. She thought of showing it to Mr.
Darling, but he was totting up winter great-coats for John and
Michael, with a wet towel around his head to keep his brain
clear, and it seemed a shame to trouble him; besides, she knew
exactly what he would say: "It all comes of having a dog for a
nurse."

She decided to roll the shadow up and put it away carefully in
a drawer, until a fitting opportunity came for telling her
husband. Ah me!