For the moment she had forgotten his ignorance about kisses.
"I thought you would want it back," he said a little bitterly,
and offered to return her the thimble.

"Oh dear," said the nice Wendy, "I don't mean a kiss, I mean a
thimble."

"What's that?"

"It's like this." She kissed him.

"Funny!" said Peter gravely. "Now shall I give you a thimble?"

"If you wish to," said Wendy, keeping her head erect this time.

Peter thimbled her, and almost immediately she screeched.
"What is it, Wendy?"

"It was exactly as if someone were pulling my hair."

"That must have been Tink. I never knew her so naughty
before."

Oh, no; girls,

" you know, are much too clever to fall out of
their prams."

This flattered Wendy immensely. "I think," she said, "it is
perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls; John there just
despises us."

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 with spirit 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. "And I know you meant
to be kind," she said, relenting, "so you may give me a kiss."

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."

"But where do you live mostly now?"

"With the lost boys."

"Who are they?"

"They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when
the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in
seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray
expenses. I'm captain."

"What fun it must be!"

"Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see
we have no female companionship."

"Are none of the others girls?"

Tinker Bell answered insolently.

"Tink," said Peter amiably, "this lady ways she wishes you
were her fairy."



"What does she say, Peter?"

He had to translate. "She is not very polite. She says you
are a great [huge] ugly girl, and that she is my fairy.

He tried to argue with Tink. "You know you can't be my fairy,
Tink, because I am an gentleman and you are a lady."

To this Tink replied in these words, "You silly ass," and
disappeared into the bathroom. "She is quite a common fairy,"
Peter explained apologetically, "she is called Tinker Bell
because she mends the pots and kettles [tinker = tin worker]."
[Similar to "cinder" plus "elle" to get Cinderella]

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.

"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 come 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!"

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

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 [spanking]. 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."

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."

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."

"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 around her neck. It was lucky that she did put
it on that chain, for it was afterwards to save her life.