all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with
flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael,
who was very small, had a flamingo
with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands,
Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had
no friends, Michael had friends at night,
Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents; but
on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood still
in a row you could say of them that they have each other's nose, and so forth.
On these magic shores children at play are for
ever beaching their coracles [simple boat].
We too have been there; we can still hear
the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most
compact; not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances
between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play
at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but
in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is
why there are night-lights.
Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs. Darling found things
she could not understand, and of these quite the most perplexing was the word Peter.
She knew of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds,
while Wendy's began to be scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder 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
from it. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen
him before in the faces of many women who have no children.
Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also. But in her dream he had rent
the film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and
Michael peeping through the gap.
The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was
dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on
the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your fist, which
darted about the room like a living thing; and I think it must have been this light
that wakened Mrs. Darling.
She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she
knew at once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been
there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling's kiss.
He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of
trees; but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his first teeth.
When he saw she was a grown-up,
he gnashed the little pearls at her.