"Wendy, you are wrong about mothers."

They all gathered round him in affright, so alarming was his
agitation; and with a fine candour he told them what he had
hitherto concealed.

"Long ago," he said, "I thought like you that my mother would
always keep the window open for me, so I stayed away for moons
and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the window was
barred, for mother had forgotten all about me, and there was
another little boy sleeping in my bed."

I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was
true; and it scared them.

"Are you sure mothers are like that?"

"Yes."

So this was the truth about mothers. The toads!

Still it is best to be careful; and no one knows so quickly as
a child when he should give in. "Wendy, let us [let's] go home,"
cried John and Michael together.

"Yes," she said, clutching them.

"Not to-night?" asked the lost boys bewildered. They knew in
what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well
without a mother, and that it is only the mothers who think you
can't.

"At once," Wendy replied resolutely, for the horrible thought
had come to her: "Perhaps mother is in half mourning by this
time."

This dread made her forgetful of what must be Peter's feelings,
and she said to him rather sharply, "Peter, will you make the
necessary arrangements?"

"If you wish it," he replied, as coolly as if she had asked him
to pass the nuts.

Not so much as a sorry-to-lose-you between them! If she did
not mind the parting, he was going to show her, was Peter, that
neither did he.