She was called Jane, and always had an odd inquiring look, as
if from the moment she arrived on the mainland she wanted to ask
questions. When she was old enough to ask them they were mostly
about Peter Pan. She loved to hear of Peter, and Wendy told her
all she could remember in the very nursery from which the famous
flight had taken place. It was Jane's nursery now, for her
father had bought it at the three per cents. [mortgage rate] from
Wendy's father, who was no longer fond of stairs. Mrs. Darling
was now dead and forgotten.

There were only two beds in the nursery now, Jane's and her
nurse's; and there was no kennel, for Nana also had passed away.
She died of old age, and at the end she had been rather difficult
to get on with; being very firmly convinced that no one knew how
to look after children except herself.

Next year he did not come for her. She waited in a new frock
because the old one simply would not meet; but he never came.

"Perhaps he is ill," Michael said.

"You know he is never ill."

Michael came close to her and whispered, with a shiver,
"Perhaps there is no such person, Wendy!" and then Wendy would
have cried if Michael had not been crying.

Peter came next spring cleaning; and the strange thing was that
he never knew he had missed a year.

That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a
little longer she tried for his sake not to have growing pains;
and she felt she was untrue to him when she got a prize for
general knowledge. But the years came and went without bringing
the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married
woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box
in which she had kept her toys. Wendy was grown up. You need
not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow
up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker
than other girls.

All the boys were grown up and done for by this time; so it is
scarcely worth while saying anything more about them. You may
see the twins and Nibs and Curly any day going to an office, each
carrying a little bag and an umbrella. Michael is an engine-
driver [train engineer]. Slightly married a lady of title, and
so he became a lord. You see that judge in a wig coming out at
the iron door? That used to be Tootles. The bearded man who
doesn't know any story to tell his children was once John.

Wendy was married in white with a pink sash. It is strange to
think that Peter did not alight in the church and forbid the
banns [formal announcement of a marriage].

Years rolled on again, and Wendy had a daughter. This ought
not to be written in ink but in a golden splash.

Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered
at him; so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end
of the first year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had
woven from leaves and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear
was that he might notice how short it had become; but he never
noticed, he had so much to say about himself.

She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old
times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.

"Who is Captain Hook?" he asked with interest when she spoke of
the arch enemy.

"Don't you remember," she asked, amazed, "how you killed him
and saved all our lives?"

"I forget them after I kill them," he replied carelessly.

When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be
glad to see her he said, "Who is Tinker Bell?"

"O Peter," she said, shocked; but even when she explained he
could not remember.

"There are such a lot of them," he said. "I expect she is no
more."

I expect he was right, for fairies don't live long, but they
are so little that a short time seems a good while to them.

Wendy was pained too to find that the past year was but as
yesterday to Peter; it had seemed such a long year of waiting to
her. But he was exactly as fascinating as ever, and they had a
lovely spring cleaning in the little house on the tree tops.

Of course Peter promised; and then he flew away. He took Mrs.
Darling's kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else,
Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemed satisfied.

Of course all the boys went to school; and most of them got
into Class III, but Slightly was put first into Class IV and then
into Class V. Class I is the top class. Before they had
attended school a week they saw what goats they had been not to
remain on the island; but it was too late now, and soon they
settled down to being as ordinary as you or me or Jenkins minor
[the younger Jenkins]. It is sad to have to say that the power
to fly gradually left them. At first Nana tied their feet to the
bed-posts so that they should not fly away in the night; and one
of their diversions by day was to pretend to fall off buses [the
English double-deckers]; but by and by they ceased to tug at
their bonds in bed, and found that they hurt themselves when they
let go of the bus. In time they could not even fly after their
hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was
that they no longer believed.

"Certainly not. I have got you home again, and I mean to keep
you."

"But he does so need a mother."

"So do you, my love."

"Oh, all right," Peter said, as if he had asked her from
politeness merely; but Mrs. Darling saw his mouth twitch, and she
made this handsome offer: to let Wendy go to him for a week
every year to do his spring cleaning. Wendy would have preferred
a more permanent arrangement; and it seemed to her that spring
would be long in coming; but this promise sent Peter away quite
gay again. He had no sense of time, and was so full of
adventures that all I have told you about him is only a
halfpenny-worth of them. I suppose it was because Wendy knew
this that her last words to him were these rather plaintive ones:

"You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring cleaning
time comes?"

"I shall have such fun," said Peter, with eye on Wendy.

"It will be rather lonely in the evening," she said, "sitting
by the fire."

"I shall have Tink."

"Tink can't go a twentieth part of the way round," she reminded
him a little tartly.

"Sneaky tell-tale!" Tink called out from somewhere round the
corner.

"It doesn't matter," Peter said.

"O Peter, you know it matters."

"Well, then, come with me to the little house."

"May I, mummy?"

"Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a
man."

"But where are you going to live?"

"With Tink in the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to
put it high up among the tree tops where they sleep at nights."

"How lovely," cried Wendy so longingly that Mrs. Darling
tightened her grip.

"I thought all the fairies were dead," Mrs. Darling said.

"There are always a lot of young ones," explained Wendy, who
was now quite an authority, "because you see when a new baby
laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are
always new babies there are always new fairies. They live in
nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and the
white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies
who are not sure what they are."

Mrs. Darling

came to the window, for at present she was keeping
a sharp eye on Wendy. She told Peter that she had adopted all
the other boys, and would like to adopt him also.

"Would you send me to school?" he inquired craftily.

"Yes."

"And then to an office?"

"I suppose so."

"Soon I would be a man?"

"Very soon."

"I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things," he told
her passionately. "I don't want to be a man. O Wendy's mother,
if I was to wake up and feel there was a beard!"

"Peter," said Wendy the comforter, "I should love you in a
beard"; and Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he
repulsed her.

It turned out that not one of them thought him a cypher; and he
was absurdly gratified, and said he would find space for them all
in the drawing-room if they fitted in.

"We'll fit in, sir," they assured him.

"Then follow the leader," he cried gaily. "Mind you, I am not
sure that we have a drawing-room, but we pretend we have, and
it's all the same. Hoop la!"

He went off dancing through the house, and they all cried "Hoop
la!" and danced after him, searching for the drawing-room; and I
forget whether they found it, but at any rate they found corners,
and they all fitted in.

As for Peter, he saw Wendy once again before he flew away. He
did not exactly come to the window, but he brushed against it in
passing so that she could open it if she liked and call to him.
That is what she did.

"Hullo, Wendy, good-bye," he said.

"Oh dear, are you going away?"

"Yes."

"You don't feel, Peter," she said falteringly, "that you would
like to say anything to my parents about a very sweet subject?"

"No."

"About me, Peter?"

"No."

Of course Mrs. Darling said at once that she would have them;
but Mr. Darling was curiously depressed, and they saw that he
considered six a rather large number.

"I must say, he said to Wendy, "that you don't do things by
halves." a grudging remark which the twins thought was pointed at
them.

The first twin was the proud one, and he asked, flushing, "Do
you think we should be too much of a handful, sir? Because, if
so, we can go away."

"Father!" Wendy cried, shocked; but still the cloud was on him.
He knew he was behaving unworthily, but he could not help it.

"We could lie doubled up," said Nibs.

"I always cut their hair myself," said Wendy.

"George!" Mrs. Darling exclaimed, pained to see her dear one
showing himself in such an unfavourable light.

Then he burst into tears, and the truth came out. He was as
glad to have them as she was, he said, but he thought they should
have asked his consent as well as hers, instead of treating him
as a cypher [zero] in his own house.

"I don't think he is a cypher," Tootles cried instantly. "Do
you think he is a cypher, Curly?"

"No, I don't. Do you think he is a cypher, Slightly?"

"Rather not. Twin, what do you think?"

WHEN WENDY GREW UP

I hope you want to know what became of the other boys. They
were waiting below to give Wendy time to explain about them; and
when they had counted five hundred they went up. They went up by
the stair, because they thought this would make a better
impression. They stood in a row in front of Mrs. Darling, with
their hats off, and wishing they were not wearing their pirate
clothes. They said nothing, but their eyes asked her to have
them. They ought to have looked at Mr. Darling also, but they
forgot about him.

"That's Michael,"

she said, and she stretched out her arms for
the three little selfish children they would never envelop again.
Yes, they did, they went round Wendy and John and Michael, who
had slipped out of bed and run to her.

"George, George!" she cried when she could speak; and Mr.
Darling woke to share her bliss, and Nana came rushing in. There
could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see
it except a little boy who was staring in at the window. He had
had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but
he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he
must be for ever barred.

And so when Mrs. Darling went back to the night-nursery to see
if her husband was asleep, all the beds were occupied. The
children waited for her cry of joy, but it did not come. She saw
them, but she did not believe they were there. You see, she saw
them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought this
was just the dream hanging around her still.

She sat down in the chair by the fire, where in the old days
she had nursed them.

They could not understand this, and a cold fear fell upon all
the three of them.

"Mother!" Wendy cried.

"That's Wendy," she said, but still she was sure it was the
dream.

"Mother!"

"That's John," she said.

"Mother!" cried Michael. He knew her now.

"Surely,"

said John, like one who had lost faith in his memory,
"he used not to sleep in the kennel?"

"John," Wendy said falteringly, "perhaps we don't remember the
old life as well as we thought we did."

A chill fell upon them; and serve them right.

"It is very careless of mother," said that young scoundrel
John, "not to be here when we come back."

It was then that Mrs. Darling began playing again.

"It's mother!" cried Wendy, peeping.

"So it is!" said John.

"Then are you not really our mother, Wendy?" asked Michael, who
was surely sleepy.

"Oh dear!" exclaimed Wendy, with her first real twinge of
remorse [for having gone], "it was quite time we came back,"

"Let us creep in," John suggested, "and put our hands over her
eyes."

But Wendy, who saw that they must break the joyous news more
gently, had a better plan.

"Let us all slip into our beds, and be there when she comes in,
just as if we had never been away.""Surely,"