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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78131 ***
+
+
+
+
+  +---------------------------+
+  |  THE UNIFORM EDITION OF   |
+  | THE PLAYS OF J. M. BARRIE |
+  +---------------------------+
+
+PETER PAN
+
+OR
+
+THE BOY WHO WOULD NOT
+GROW UP
+
+
+
+
+_THE WORKS OF J. M. BARRIE._
+
+
+_NOVELS, STORIES, PLAYS, AND SKETCHES._
+
+_Uniform Edition._
+
+  AULD LICHT IDYLLS, BETTER DEAD.
+  WHEN A MAN’S SINGLE.
+  A WINDOW IN THRUMS, AN EDINBURGH ELEVEN.
+  THE LITTLE MINISTER.
+  SENTIMENTAL TOMMY.
+  MY LADY NICOTINE, MARGARET OGILVY.
+  TOMMY AND GRIZEL.
+  THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD.
+  PETER AND WENDY.
+
+  _Also_
+
+  HALF HOURS, DER TAG.
+  ECHOES OF THE WAR.
+
+
+_PLAYS._
+
+_Uniform Edition._
+
+  PETER PAN.
+  MARY ROSE.
+  DEAR BRUTUS.
+  A KISS FOR CINDERELLA.
+  ALICE SIT-BY-THE-FIRE.
+  WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS.
+  QUALITY STREET.
+  THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON.
+  ECHOES OF THE WAR.
+
+  _Containing_: The Old Lady Shows Her Medals--The New Word--Barbara’s
+  Wedding--A Well-Remembered Voice.
+
+  HALF HOURS.
+
+  _Containing_: Pantaloon--The Twelve-Pound Look--Rosalind--The Will.
+
+
+_Others in Preparation._
+
+_INDIVIDUAL EDITIONS._
+
+  COURAGE.
+  PETER PAN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.
+      Illustrated by ARTHUR RACKHAM.
+  PETER AND WENDY.
+      Illustrated by F. D. BEDFORD.
+  PETER PAN AND WENDY.
+      Illustrated by MISS ATTWELL.
+  TOMMY AND GRIZEL.
+      Illustrated by BERNARD PARTRIDGE.
+  MARGARET OGILVY.
+
+⁂ For particulars concerning _The Thistle Edition_ of the Works of J.
+M. Barrie, sold only by subscription, send for circular.
+
+
+NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
+
+
+
+
+THE PLAYS OF
+J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+PETER PAN
+
+OR
+
+THE BOY WHO WOULD NOT
+GROW UP
+
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
+NEW YORK : : : : : : : : 1928
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY
+J. M. BARRIE
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+_All rights reserved under the International Copyright Act.
+Performance forbidden and right of representation reserved.
+Application for the right of performing this play must be
+made to Charles Frohman, Inc., Empire Theatre, New York._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+TO THE FIVE
+
+A DEDICATION
+
+
+Some disquieting confessions must be made in printing at last the play
+of _Peter Pan_; among them this, that I have no recollection of having
+written it. Of that, however, anon. What I want to do first is to give
+Peter to the Five without whom he never would have existed. I hope,
+my dear sirs, that in memory of what we have been to each other you
+will accept this dedication with your friend’s love. The play of Peter
+is streaky with you still, though none may see this save ourselves. A
+score of Acts had to be left out, and you were in them all. We first
+brought Peter down, didn’t we, with a blunt-headed arrow in Kensington
+Gardens? I seem to remember that we believed we had killed him, though
+he was only winded, and that after a spasm of exultation in our
+prowess the more soft-hearted among us wept and all of us thought of
+the police. There was not one of you who would not have sworn as an
+eye-witness to this occurence; no doubt I was abetting, but you used to
+provide corroboration that was never given to you by me. As for myself,
+I suppose I always knew that I made Peter by rubbing the five of you
+violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame. That is
+all he is, the spark I got from you.
+
+We had good sport of him before we clipped him small to make him fit
+the boards. Some of you were not born when the story began and yet
+were hefty figures before we saw that the game was up. Do you remember
+a garden at Burpham and the initiation there of No. 4 when he was six
+weeks old, and three of you grudged letting him in so young? Have you,
+No. 3, forgotten the white violets at the Cistercian abbey in which
+we cassocked our first fairies (all little friends of St. Benedict),
+or your cry to the Gods, ‘Do I just kill one pirate all the time?’ Do
+you remember Marooners’ Hut in the haunted groves of Waverley, and the
+St. Bernard dog in a tiger’s mask who so frequently attacked you, and
+the literary record of that summer, _The Boy Castaways_, which is
+so much the best and the rarest of this author’s works? What was it
+that made us eventually give to the public in the thin form of a play
+that which had been woven for ourselves alone? Alas, I know what it
+was, I was losing my grip. One by one as you swung monkey-wise from
+branch to branch in the wood of make-believe you reached the tree of
+knowledge. Sometimes you swung back into the wood, as the unthinking
+may at a cross-road take a familiar path that no longer leads to home;
+or you perched ostentatiously on its boughs to please me, pretending
+that you still belonged; soon you knew it only as the vanished wood,
+for it vanishes if one needs to look for it. A time came when I saw
+that No. 1, the most gallant of you all, ceased to believe that he was
+ploughing woods incarnadine, and with an apologetic eye for me derided
+the lingering faith of No. 2; when even No. 3 questioned gloomily
+whether he did not really spend his nights in bed. There were still two
+who knew no better, but their day was dawning. In these circumstances,
+I suppose, was begun the writing of the play of Peter. That was a
+quarter of a century ago, and I clutch my brows in vain to remember
+whether it was a last desperate throw to retain the five of you for a
+little longer, or merely a cold decision to turn you into bread and
+butter.
+
+This brings us back to my uncomfortable admission that I have no
+recollection of writing the play of _Peter Pan_, now being published
+for the first time so long after he made his bow upon the stage. You
+had played it until you tired of it, and tossed it in the air and gored
+it and left it derelict in the mud and went on your way singing other
+songs; and then I stole back and sewed some of the gory fragments
+together with a pen-nib. That is what must have happened, but I cannot
+remember doing it. I remember writing the story of _Peter and Wendy_
+many years after the production of the play, but I might have cribbed
+that from some typed copy. I can haul back to mind the writing of
+almost every other essay of mine, however forgotten by the pretty
+public; but this play of Peter, no. Even my beginning as an amateur
+playwright, that noble mouthful, _Bandelero the Bandit_, I remember
+every detail of its composition in my school days at Dumfries. Not less
+vivid is my first little piece, produced by Mr. Toole. It was called
+_Ibsen’s Ghost_, and was a parody of the mightiest craftsman that ever
+wrote for our kind friends in front. To save the management the cost
+of typing I wrote out the ‘parts,’ after being told what parts were,
+and I can still recall my first words, spoken so plaintively by a now
+famous actress,--‘To run away from my second husband just as I ran
+away from my first, it feels quite like old times.’ On the first night
+a man in the pit found _Ibsen’s Ghost_ so diverting that he had to be
+removed in hysterics. After that no one seems to have thought of it at
+all. But what a man to carry about with one! How odd, too, that these
+trifles should adhere to the mind that cannot remember the long job of
+writing Peter. It does seem almost suspicious, especially as I have
+not the original MS. of _Peter Pan_ (except a few stray pages), with
+which to support my claim. I have indeed another MS., lately made, but
+that ‘proves nothing.’ I know not whether I lost that original MS. or
+destroyed it or happily gave it away. I talk of dedicating the play to
+you, but how can I prove it is mine? How ought I to act if some other
+hand, who could also have made a copy, thinks it worth while to contest
+the cold rights? Cold they are to me now as that laughter of yours in
+which Peter came into being long before he was caught and written down.
+There is Peter still, but to me he lies sunk in the gay Black Lake.
+
+Any one of you five brothers has a better claim to the authorship than
+most, and I would not fight you for it, but you should have launched
+your case long ago in the days when you most admired me, which were in
+the first year of the play, owing to a rumour’s reaching you that my
+spoils were one-and-sixpence a night. This was untrue, but it did give
+me a standing among you. You watched for my next play with peeled eyes,
+not for entertainment but lest it contained some chance witticism of
+yours that could be challenged as collaboration; indeed I believe there
+still exists a legal document, full of the Aforesaid and Henceforward
+to be called Part-Author, in which for some such snatching I was tied
+down to pay No. 2 one halfpenny daily throughout the run of the piece.
+
+During the rehearsals of Peter (and it is evidence in my favour
+that I was admitted to them) a depressed man in overalls, carrying
+a mug of tea or a paint-pot, used often to appear by my side in the
+shadowy stalls and say to me, ‘The gallery boys won’t stand it.’ He
+then mysteriously faded away as if he were the theatre ghost. This
+hopelessness of his is what all dramatists are said to feel at such
+times, so perhaps he was the author. Again, a large number of children
+whom I have seen playing Peter in their homes with careless mastership,
+constantly putting in better words, could have thrown it off with ease.
+It was for such as they that after the first production I had to add
+something to the play at the request of parents (who thus showed that
+they thought me the responsible person) about no one being able to fly
+until the fairy dust had been blown on him; so many children having
+gone home and tried it from their beds and needed surgical attention.
+
+Notwithstanding other possibilities, I think I wrote Peter, and if so
+it must have been in the usual inky way. Some of it, I like to think,
+was done in that native place which is the dearest spot on earth to me,
+though my last heart-beats shall be with my beloved solitary London
+that was so hard to reach. I must have sat at a table with that great
+dog waiting for me to stop, not complaining, for he knew it was thus we
+made our living, but giving me a look when he found he was to be in the
+play, with his sex changed. In after years when the actor who was Nana
+had to go to the wars he first taught his wife how to take his place as
+the dog till he came back, and I am glad that I see nothing funny in
+this; it seems to me to belong to the play. I offer this obtuseness on
+my part as my first proof that I am the author.
+
+Some say that we are different people at different periods of our
+lives, changing not through effort of will, which is a brave affair,
+but in the easy course of nature every ten years or so. I suppose
+this theory might explain my present trouble, but I don’t hold with
+it; I think one remains the same person throughout, merely passing,
+as it were, in these lapses of time from one room to another, but all
+in the same house. If we unlock the rooms of the far past we can peer
+in and see ourselves, busily occupied in beginning to become you and
+me. Thus, if I am the author in question the way he is to go should
+already be showing in the occupant of my first compartment, at whom
+I now take the liberty to peep. Here he is at the age of seven or so
+with his fellow-conspirator Robb, both in glengarry bonnets. They are
+giving an entertainment in a tiny old washing-house that still stands.
+The charge for admission is preens, a bool, or a peerie (I taught you a
+good deal of Scotch, so possibly you can follow that), and apparently
+the culminating Act consists in our trying to put each other into the
+boiler, though some say that I also addressed the spell-bound audience.
+This washing-house is not only the theatre of my first play, but has a
+still closer connection with Peter. It is the original of the little
+house the Lost Boys built in the Never Land for Wendy, the chief
+difference being that it never wore John’s hat as a chimney. If Robb
+had owned such a hat I have no doubt that it would have been placed on
+the washing-house.
+
+Here is that boy again some four years older, and the reading he is
+munching feverishly is about desert islands; he calls them wrecked
+islands. He buys his sanguinary tales surreptitiously in penny
+numbers. I see a change coming over him; he is blanching as he reads
+in the high-class magazine, _Chatterbox_, a fulmination against such
+literature, and sees that unless his greed for islands is quenched
+he is for ever lost. With gloaming he steals out of the house, his
+library bulging beneath his palpitating waistcoat. I follow like his
+shadow, as indeed I am, and watch him dig a hole in a field at Pathhead
+farm and bury his islands in it; it was ages ago, but I could walk
+straight to that hole in the field now and delve for the remains. I
+peep into the next compartment. There he is again, ten years older, an
+undergraduate now and craving to be a real explorer, one of those who
+do things instead of prating of them, but otherwise unaltered; he might
+be painted at twenty on top of a mast, in his hand a spy-glass through
+which he rakes the horizon for an elusive strand. I go from room to
+room, and he is now a man, real exploration abandoned (though only
+because no one would have him). Soon he is even concocting other plays,
+and quaking a little lest some low person counts how many islands there
+are in them. I note that with the years the islands grow more sinister,
+but it is only because he has now to write with the left hand, the
+right having given out; evidently one thinks more darkly down the left
+arm. Go to the keyhole of the compartment where he and I join up, and
+you may see us wondering whether they would stand one more island.
+This journey through the house may not convince any one that I wrote
+Peter, but it does suggest me as a likely person. I pause to ask myself
+whether I read _Chatterbox_ again, suffered the old agony, and buried
+that MS. of the play in a hole in a field.
+
+Of course this is over-charged. Perhaps we do change; except a little
+something in us which is no larger than a mote in the eye, and that,
+like it, dances in front of us beguiling us all our days. I cannot cut
+the hair by which it hangs.
+
+The strongest evidence that I am the author is to be found, I think,
+in a now melancholy volume, the aforementioned _The Boy Castaways_; so
+you must excuse me for parading that work here. Officer of the Court,
+call _The Boy Castaways_. The witness steps forward and proves to be
+a book you remember well though you have not glanced at it these many
+years. I pulled it out of a bookcase just now not without difficulty,
+for its recent occupation has been to support the shelf above. I
+suppose, though I am uncertain, that it was I and not you who hammered
+it into that place of utility. It is a little battered and bent after
+the manner of those who shoulder burdens, and ought (to our shame)
+to remind us of the witnesses who sometimes get an hour off from the
+cells to give evidence before his Lordship. I have said that it is
+the rarest of my printed works, as it must be, for the only edition
+was limited to two copies, of which one (there was always some devilry
+in any matter connected with Peter) instantly lost itself in railway
+carriage. This is the survivor. The idlers in court may have assumed
+that it is a handwritten screed, and are impressed by its bulk. It is
+printed by Constable’s (how handsomely you did us, dear Blaikie), it
+contains thirty-five illustrations and is bound in cloth with a picture
+stamped on the cover of the three eldest of you ‘setting out to be
+wrecked.’ This record is supposed to be edited by the youngest of the
+three, and I must have granted him that honour to make up for his being
+so often lifted bodily out of our adventures by his nurse, who kept
+breaking into them for the fell purpose of giving him a midday rest.
+No. 4 rested so much at this period that he was merely an honorary
+member of the band, waving his foot to you for luck when you set off
+with bow and arrow to shoot his dinner for him; and one may rummage the
+book in vain for any trace of No. 5. Here is the title-page, except
+that you are numbered instead of named--
+
+THE BOY
+CASTAWAYS
+OF BLACK LAKE ISLAND
+
+Being a record of the Terrible
+Adventures of Three Brothers
+in the summer of 1901
+faithfully set forth
+by No. 3.
+
+LONDON
+Published by J. M. Barrie
+in the Gloucester Road
+1901
+
+There is a long preface by No. 3 in which we gather your ages at this
+first flight. ‘No. 1 was eight and a month, No. 2 was approaching his
+seventh lustrum, and I was a good bit past four.’ Of his two elders,
+while commending their fearless dispositions, the editor complains that
+they wanted to do all the shooting and carried the whole equipment of
+arrows inside their shirts. He is attractively modest about himself,
+‘Of No. 3 I prefer to say nothing, hoping that the tale as it is
+unwound will show that he was a boy of deeds rather than of words,’ a
+quality which he hints did not unduly protrude upon the brows of Nos.
+1 and 2. His preface ends on a high note, ‘I should say that the work
+was in the first instance compiled as a record simply at which we could
+whet our memories, and that it is now published for No. 4’s benefit. If
+it teaches him by example lessons in fortitude and manly endurance we
+shall consider that we were not wrecked in vain.’
+
+Published to whet your memories. Does it whet them? Do you hear once
+more, like some long-forgotten whistle beneath your window (Robb at
+dawn calling me to the fishing!) the not quite mortal blows that still
+echo in some of the chapter headings?--‘Chapter II, No. 1 teaches
+Wilkinson (his master) a Stern Lesson--We Run away to Sea. Chapter
+III, A Fearful Hurricane--Wreck of the “Anna Pink”--We go crazy from
+Want of Food--Proposal to eat No. 3--Land Ahoy.’ Such are two chapters
+out of sixteen. Are these again your javelins cutting tunes in the
+blue haze of the pines; do you sweat as you scale the dreadful Valley
+of Rolling Stones, and cleanse your hands of pirate blood by scouring
+them carelessly in Mother Earth? Can you still make a fire (you could
+do it once, Mr. Seton-Thompson taught us in, surely an odd place, the
+Reform Club) by rubbing those sticks together? Was it the travail of
+hut-building that subsequently advised Peter to find a ‘home under the
+ground’? The bottle and mugs in that lurid picture, ‘Last night on
+the Island,’ seem to suggest that you had changed from Lost Boys into
+pirates, which was probably also a tendency of Peter’s. Listen again
+to our stolen saw-mill, man’s proudest invention; when he made the
+saw-mill he beat the birds for music in a wood.
+
+The illustrations (full-paged) in _The Boy Castaways_ are all
+photographs taken by myself; some of them indeed of phenomena that had
+to be invented afterwards, for you were always off doing the wrong
+things when I pressed the button. I see that we combined instruction
+with amusement; perhaps we had given our kingly word to that effect.
+How otherwise account for such wording to the pictures as these: ‘It
+is undoubtedly,’ says No. 1 in a fir tree that is bearing unwonted
+fruit, recently tied to it, ‘the _Cocos nucifera_, for observe the
+slender columns supporting the crown of leaves which fall with a grace
+that no art can imitate.’ ‘Truly,’ continues No. 1 under the same
+tree in another forest as he leans upon his trusty gun, ‘though the
+perils of these happenings are great, yet would I rejoice to endure
+still greater privations to be thus rewarded by such wondrous studies
+of Nature.’ He is soon back to the practical, however, ‘recognising
+the Mango (_Magnifera indica_) by its lancet-shaped leaves and the
+cucumber-shaped fruit.’ No. 1 was certainly the right sort of voyager
+to be wrecked with, though if my memory fails me not, No. 2, to whom
+these strutting observations were addressed, sometimes protested
+because none of them was given to him. No. 3 being the author is in
+surprisingly few of the pictures, but this, you may remember, was
+because the lady already darkly referred to used to pluck him from our
+midst for his siesta at 12 o’clock, which was the hour that best suited
+the camera. With a skill on which he has never been complimented the
+photographer sometimes got No. 3 nominally included in a wild-life
+picture when he was really in a humdrum house kicking on the sofa.
+Thus in a scene representing Nos. 1 and 2 sitting scowling outside the
+hut it is untruly written that they scowled because ‘their brother was
+within singing and playing on a barbaric instrument. The music,’ the
+unseen No. 3 is represented as saying (obviously forestalling No. 1),
+‘is rude and to a cultured ear discordant, but the songs like those of
+the Arabs are full of poetic imagery.’ He was perhaps allowed to say
+this sulkily on the sofa.
+
+Though _The Boy Castaways_ has sixteen chapter-headings, there is no
+other letterpress; an absence which possible purchasers might complain
+of, though there are surely worse ways of writing a book than this.
+These headings anticipate much of the play of _Peter Pan_, but there
+were many incidents of our Kensington Gardens days that never get into
+the book, such as our Antarctic exploits when we reached the Pole in
+advance of our friend Captain Scott and cut our initials on it for
+him to find, a strange foreshadowing of what was really to happen. In
+_The Boy Castaways_ Captain Hook has arrived but is called Captain
+Swarthy, and he seems from the pictures to have been a black man. This
+character, as you do not need to be told, is held by those in the know
+to be autobiographical. You had many tussels with him (though you
+never, I think, got his right arm) before you reached the terrible
+chapter (which might be taken from the play) entitled ‘We Board the
+Pirate Ship at Dawn--A Rakish Craft--No. 1 Hew-them-Down and No. 2 of
+the Red Hatchet--A Holocaust of Pirates--Rescue of Peter.’ (Hullo,
+Peter rescued instead of rescuing others? I know what that means and so
+do you, but we are not going to give away all our secrets.) The scene
+of the Holocaust is the Black Lake (afterwards, when we let women in,
+the Mermaids’ Lagoon). The pirate captain’s end was not in the mouth
+of a crocodile though we had crocodiles on the spot (‘while No. 2 was
+removing the crocodiles from the stream No. 1 shot a few parrots,
+_Psittacidae_, for our evening meal’). I think our captain had divers
+deaths owing to unseemly competition among you, each wanting to slay
+him single-handed. On a special occasion, such as when No. 3 pulled out
+the tooth himself, you gave the deed to him, but took it from him while
+he rested. The only pictorial representation in the book of Swarthy’s
+fate is in two parts. In one, called briefly ‘We string him up,’ Nos.
+1 and 2, stern as Athos, are hauling him up a tree by a rope, his face
+snarling as if it were a grinning mask (which indeed it was), and his
+garments very like some of my own stuffed with bracken. The other, the
+same scene next day, is called ‘The Vultures had Picked him Clean,’ and
+tells its own tale.
+
+The dog in _The Boy Castaways_ seems never to have been called Nana
+but was evidently in training for that post. He originally belonged
+to Swarthy (or to Captain Marryat?), and the first picture of him,
+lean, skulking, and hunched (how did I get that effect?), ‘patrolling
+the island’ in that monster’s interests, gives little indication of
+the domestic paragon he was to become. We lured him away to the better
+life, and there is, later, a touching picture, a clear forecast of the
+Darling nursery, entitled ‘We trained the dog to watch over us while we
+slept.’ In this he also is sleeping, in a position that is a careful
+copy of his charges; indeed any trouble we had with him was because,
+once he knew he was in a story, he thought his safest course was to
+imitate you in everything you did. How anxious he was to show that he
+understood the game, and more generous than you, he never pretended
+that he was the one who killed Captain Swarthy. I must not imply that
+he was entirely without initiative, for it was his own idea to bark
+warningly a minute or two before twelve o’clock as a signal to No.
+3 that his keeper was probably on her way for him (Disappearance of
+No. 3); and he became so used to living in the world of Pretend that
+when we reached the hut of a morning he was often there waiting for
+us, looking, it is true, rather idiotic, but with a new bark he had
+invented which puzzled us until we decided that he was demanding the
+password. He was always willing to do any extra jobs, such as becoming
+the tiger in mask, and when after a fierce engagement you carried home
+that mask in triumph, he joined in the procession proudly and never
+let on that the trophy had ever been part of him. Long afterwards he
+saw the play from a box in the theatre, and as familiar scenes were
+unrolled before his eyes I have never seen a dog so bothered. At one
+matinee we even let him for a moment take the place of the actor who
+played Nana, and I don’t know that any members of the audience ever
+noticed the change, though he introduced some ‘business’ that was
+new to them but old to you and me. Heigh-ho, I suspect that in this
+reminiscence I am mixing him up with his successor, for such a one
+there had to be, the loyal Newfoundland who, perhaps in the following
+year, applied, so to say, for the part by bringing hedgehogs to the hut
+in his mouth as offerings for our evening repasts. The head and coat
+of him were copied for the Nana of the play.
+
+They do seem to be emerging out of our island, don’t they, the little
+people of the play, all except that sly one, the chief figure, who
+draws farther and farther into the wood as we advance upon him? He so
+dislikes being tracked, as if there were something odd about him, that
+when he dies he means to get up and blow away the particle that will be
+his ashes.
+
+Wendy has not yet appeared, but she has been trying to come ever since
+that loyal nurse cast the humorous shadow of woman upon the scene and
+made us feel that it might be fun to let in a disturbing element.
+Perhaps she would have bored her way in at last whether we wanted her
+or not. It may be that even Peter did not really bring her to the
+Never Land of his free will, but merely pretended to do so because she
+would not stay away. Even Tinker Bell had reached our island before we
+left it. It was one evening when we climbed the wood carrying No. 4 to
+show him what the trail was like by twilight. As our lanterns twinkled
+among the leaves No. 4 saw a twinkle stand still for a moment and he
+waved his foot gaily to it, thus creating Tink. It must not be thought,
+however, that there were any other sentimental passages between No.
+4 and Tink; indeed, as he got to know her better he suspected her of
+frequenting the hut to see what we had been having for supper, and to
+partake of the same, and he pursued her with malignancy.
+
+A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open
+a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you
+don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more
+interesting. It is in this way that I get my desultory reading, which
+includes the few stray leaves of the original MS. of Peter that I have
+said I do possess, though even they, when returned to the drawer, are
+gone again, as if that touch of devilry lurked in them still. They show
+that in early days I hacked at and added to the play. In the drawer I
+find some scraps of Mr. Crook’s delightful music, and other incomplete
+matter relating to Peter. Here is the reply of a boy whom I favoured
+with a seat in my box and injudiciously asked at the end what he had
+liked best. ‘What I think I liked best,’ he said, ‘was tearing up the
+programme and dropping the bits on people’s heads.’ Thus am I often
+laid low. A copy of my favourite programme of the play is still in the
+drawer. In the first or second year of Peter No. 4 could not attend
+through illness, so we took the play to his nursery, far away in the
+country, an array of vehicles almost as glorious as a travelling
+circus; the leading parts were played by the youngest children in
+the London company, and No. 4, aged five, looked on solemnly at the
+performance from his bed and never smiled once. That was my first and
+only appearance on the real stage, and this copy of the programme shows
+I was thought so meanly of as an actor that they printed my name in
+smaller letters than the others.
+
+I have said little here of Nos. 4 and 5, and it is high time I had
+finished. They had a long summer day, and I turn round twice and now
+they are off to school. On Monday, as it seems, I was escorting No. 5
+to a children’s party and brushing his hair in the ante-room; and by
+Thursday he is placing me against the wall of an underground station
+and saying, ‘Now I am going to get the tickets; don’t move till I come
+back for you or you’ll lose yourself.’ No. 4 jumps from being astride
+my shoulders fishing, I knee-deep in the stream, to becoming, while
+still a schoolboy, the sternest of my literary critics. Anything he
+shook his head over I abandoned, and conceivably the world has thus
+been deprived of masterpieces. There was for instance an unfortunate
+little tragedy which I liked until I foolishly told No. 4 its subject,
+when he frowned and said he had better have a look at it. He read it,
+and then, patting me on the back, as only he and No. 1 could touch me,
+said, ‘You know you can’t do this sort of thing.’ End of a tragedian.
+Sometimes, however, No. 4 liked my efforts, and I walked in the azure
+that day when he returned _Dear Brutus_ to me with the comment ‘Not
+so bad.’ In earlier days, when he was ten, I offered him the MS. of
+my book _Margaret Ogilvy_. ‘Oh, thanks,’ he said almost immediately,
+and added, ‘Of course my desk is awfully full.’ I reminded him that he
+could take out some of its more ridiculous contents. He said, ‘I have
+read it already in the book.’ This I had not known, and I was secretly
+elated, but I said that people sometimes liked to preserve this kind of
+thing as a curiosity. He said ‘Oh’ again. I said tartly that he was not
+compelled to take it if he didn’t want it. He said, ‘Of course I want
+it, but my desk----’ Then he wriggled out of the room and came back in
+a few minutes dragging in No. 5 and announcing triumphantly, ‘No. 5
+will have it.’
+
+The rebuffs I have got from all of you! They were especially crushing
+in those early days when one by one you came out of your belief in
+fairies and lowered on me as the deceiver. My grandest triumph, the
+best thing in the play of _Peter Pan_ (though it is not in it), is
+that long after No. 4 had ceased to believe, I brought him back to the
+faith for at least two minutes. We were on our way in a boat to fish
+the Outer Hebrides (where we caught _Mary Rose_), and though it was a
+journey of days he wore his fishing basket on his back all the time,
+so as to be able to begin at once. His one pain was the absence of
+Johnny Mackay, for Johnny was the loved gillie of the previous summer
+who had taught him everything that is worth knowing (which is a matter
+of flies) but could not be with us this time as he would have had to
+cross and re-cross Scotland to reach us. As the boat drew near the Kyle
+of Lochalsh pier I told Nos. 4 and 5 it was such a famous wishing pier
+that they had now but to wish and they should have. No. 5 believed at
+once and expressed a wish to meet himself (I afterwards found him on
+the pier searching faces confidently), but No. 4 thought it more of
+my untimely nonsense and doggedly declined to humour me. ‘Whom do you
+want to see most, No. 4?’ ‘Of course I would like most to see Johnny
+Mackay.’ ‘Well, then, wish for him.’ ‘Oh, rot.’ ‘It can’t do any harm
+to wish.’ Contemptuously he wished, and as the ropes were thrown on the
+pier he saw Johnny waiting for him, loaded with angling paraphernalia.
+I know no one less like a fairy than Johnny Mackay, but for two
+minutes No. 4 was quivering in another world than ours. When he came
+to he gave me a smile which meant that we understood each other, and
+thereafter neglected me for a month, being always with Johnny. As I
+have said, this episode is not in the play; so though I dedicate _Peter
+Pan_ to you I keep the smile, with the few other broken fragments of
+immortality that have come my way.
+
+
+
+
+ACT I
+
+
+
+
+ACT I
+
+THE NURSERY
+
+
+_The night nursery of the Darling family, which is the scene of our
+opening Act, is at the top of a rather depressed street in Bloomsbury.
+We have a right to place it where we will, and the reason Bloomsbury is
+chosen is that Mr. Roget once lived there. So did we in days when his_
+Thesaurus _was our only companion in London; and we whom he has helped
+to wend our way through life have always wanted to pay him a little
+compliment. The Darlings therefore lived in Bloomsbury._
+
+_It is a corner house whose top window, the important one, looks upon a
+leafy square from which Peter used to fly up to it, to the delight of
+three children and no doubt the irritation of passers-by. The street is
+still there, though the steaming sausage shop has gone; and apparently
+the same cards perch now as then over the doors, inviting homeless
+ones to come and stay with the hospitable inhabitants. Since the days
+of the Darlings, however, a lick of paint has been applied; and our
+corner house in particular, which has swallowed its neighbour, blooms
+with awful freshness as if the colours had been discharged upon it
+through a hose. Its card now says ‘No children,’ meaning maybe that the
+goings-on of Wendy and her brothers have given the house a bad name. As
+for ourselves, we have not been in it since we went back to reclaim our
+old_ Thesaurus.
+
+_That is what we call the Darling house, but you may dump it down
+anywhere you like, and if you think it was your house you are very
+probably right. It wanders about London looking for anybody in need of
+it, like the little house in the Never Land._
+
+_The blind (which is what Peter would have called the theatre curtain
+if he had ever seen one) rises on that top room, a shabby little room
+if Mrs. Darling had not made it the hub of creation by her certainty
+that such it was, and adorned it to match with a loving heart and all
+the scrapings of her purse. The door on the right leads into the day
+nursery, which she has no right to have, but she made it herself with
+nails in her mouth and a paste-pot in her hand. This is the door the
+children will come in by. There are three beds and (rather oddly) a
+large dog-kennel; two of these beds, with the kennel, being on the left
+and the other on the right. The coverlets of the beds (if visitors are
+expected) are made out of Mrs. Darling’s wedding-gown, which was such
+a grand affair that it still keeps them pinched. Over each bed is a
+china house, the size of a linnet’s nest, containing a night-light. The
+fire, which is on our right, is burning as discreetly as if it were in
+custody, which in a sense it is, for supporting the mantelshelf are
+two wooden soldiers, home-made, begun by Mr. Darling, finished by Mrs.
+Darling, repainted (unfortunately) by John Darling. On the fire-guard
+hang incomplete parts of children’s night attire. The door the parents
+will come in by is on the left. At the back is the bathroom door, with
+a cuckoo clock over it; and in the centre is the window, which is at
+present ever so staid and respectable, but half an hour hence (namely
+at 6.30 p.m.) will be able to tell a very strange tale to the police._
+
+_The only occupant of the room at present is Nana the nurse, reclining,
+not as you might expect on the one soft chair, but on the floor. She is
+a Newfoundland dog, and though this may shock the grandiose, the not
+exactly affluent will make allowances. The Darlings could not afford
+to have a nurse, they could not afford indeed to have children; and
+now you are beginning to understand how they did it. Of course Nana has
+been trained by Mrs. Darling, but like all treasures she was born to
+it. In this play we shall see her chiefly inside the house, but she was
+just as exemplary outside, escorting the two elders to school with an
+umbrella in her mouth, for instance, and butting them back into line if
+they strayed._
+
+_The cuckoo clock strikes six, and Nana springs into life. This first
+moment in the play is tremendously important, for if the actor playing
+Nana does not spring properly we are undone. She will probably be
+played by a boy, if one clever enough can be found, and must never
+be on two legs except on those rare occasions when an ordinary nurse
+would be on four. This Nana must go about all her duties in a most
+ordinary manner, so that you know in your bones that she performs them
+just so every evening at six; naturalness must be her passion; indeed,
+it should be the aim of every one in the play, for which she is now
+setting the pace. All the characters, whether grown-ups or babes, must
+wear a child’s outlook on life as their only important adornment. If
+they cannot help being funny they are begged to go away. A good motto
+for all would be ‘The little less, and how much it is.’_
+
+_Nana, making much use of her mouth, ‘turns down’ the beds, and carries
+the various articles on the fire-guard across to them. Then pushing the
+bathroom door open, she is seen at work on the taps preparing Michael’s
+bath; after which she enters from the day nursery with the youngest of
+the family on her back._
+
+MICHAEL (_obstreperous_). I won’t go to bed, I won’t, I won’t. Nana, it
+isn’t six o’clock yet. Two minutes more, please, one minute more? Nana,
+I won’t be bathed, I tell you I will not be bathed.
+
+  (_Here the bathroom door closes on them, and_ MRS. DARLING, _who
+  has perhaps heard his cry, enters the nursery. She is the loveliest
+  lady in Bloomsbury, with a sweet mocking mouth, and as she is
+  going out to dinner to-night she is already wearing her evening
+  gown because she knows her children like to see her in it. It is
+  a delicious confection made by herself out of nothing and other
+  people’s mistakes. She does not often go out to dinner, preferring
+  when the children are in bed to sit beside them tidying up their
+  minds, just as if they were drawers. If_ WENDY _and the boys could
+  keep awake they might see her repacking into their proper places the
+  many articles of the mind that have strayed during the day, lingering
+  humorously over some of their contents, wondering where on earth they
+  picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet,
+  pressing this to her cheek and hurriedly stowing that out of sight.
+  When they wake in the morning the naughtinesses with which they went
+  to bed are not, alas, blown away, but they are placed at the bottom
+  of the drawer; and on the top, beautifully aired, are their prettier
+  thoughts ready for the new day._
+
+  _As she enters the room she is startled to see a strange little face
+  outside the window and a hand groping as if it wanted to come in._)
+
+MRS DARLING. Who are you? (_The unknown disappears; she hurries to the
+window._) No one there. And yet I feel sure I saw a face. My children!
+(_She throws open the bathroom door and_ MICHAEL’S _head appears gaily
+over the bath. He splashes; she throws kisses to him and closes the
+door. ‘Wendy, John,’ she cries, and gets reassuring answers from the
+day nursery. She sits down, relieved, on_ WENDY’S _bed; and_ WENDY
+_and_ JOHN _come in, looking their smallest size, as children tend to
+do to a mother suddenly in fear for them_.)
+
+JOHN (_histrionically_). We are doing an act; we are playing at being
+you and father. (_He imitates the only father who has come under his
+special notice._) A little less noise there.
+
+WENDY. Now let us pretend we have a baby.
+
+JOHN (_good-naturedly_). I am happy to inform you, Mrs. Darling, that
+you are now a mother. (WENDY _gives way to ecstasy_.) You have missed
+the chief thing; you haven’t asked, ‘boy or girl?’
+
+WENDY. I am so glad to have one at all, I don’t care which it is.
+
+JOHN (_crushingly_). That is just the difference between gentlemen and
+ladies. Now you tell me.
+
+WENDY. I am happy to acquaint you, Mr. Darling, you are now a father.
+
+JOHN. Boy or girl?
+
+WENDY (_presenting herself_). Girl.
+
+JOHN. Tuts.
+
+WENDY. You horrid.
+
+JOHN. Go on.
+
+WENDY. I am happy to acquaint you, Mr. Darling, you are again a father.
+
+JOHN. Boy or girl?
+
+WENDY. Boy. (JOHN _beams_.) Mummy, it’s hateful of him.
+
+  (MICHAEL _emerges from the bathroom in_ JOHN’S _old pyjamas and
+  giving his face a last wipe with the towel_.)
+
+MICHAEL (_expanding_). Now, John, have me.
+
+JOHN. We don’t want any more.
+
+MICHAEL (_contracting_). Am I not to be born at all?
+
+JOHN. Two is enough.
+
+MICHAEL (_wheedling_). Come, John; boy, John. (_Appalled_) Nobody wants
+me!
+
+MRS. DARLING. I do.
+
+MICHAEL (_with a glimmer of hope_). Boy or girl?
+
+MRS. DARLING (_with one of those happy thoughts of hers_). Boy.
+
+  (_Triumph of_ MICHAEL; _discomfiture of_ JOHN. MR. DARLING _arrives,
+  in no mood unfortunately to gloat over this domestic scene. He is
+  really a good man as bread-winners go, and it is hard luck for
+  him to be propelled into the room now, when if we had brought him
+  in a few minutes earlier or later he might have made a fairer
+  impression. In the city where he sits on a stool all day, as fixed
+  as a postage stamp, he is so like all the others on stools that you
+  recognise him not by his face but by his stool, but at home the way
+  to gratify him is to say that he has a distinct personality. He is
+  very conscientious, and in the days when_ MRS. DARLING _gave up
+  keeping the house books correctly and drew pictures instead (which
+  he called her guesses), he did all the totting up for her, holding
+  her hand while he calculated whether they could have Wendy or not,
+  and coming down on the right side. It is with regret, therefore,
+  that we introduce him as a tornado, rushing into the nursery in
+  evening dress, but without his coat, and brandishing in his hand a
+  recalcitrant white tie._)
+
+MR. DARLING (_implying that he has searched for her everywhere and that
+the nursery is a strange place in which to find her_). Oh, here you
+are, Mary.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_knowing at once what is the matter_). What is the
+matter, George dear?
+
+MR. DARLING (_as if the word were monstrous_). Matter! This tie, it
+will not tie. (_He waxes 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, oh dear no; begs to be excused.
+
+MICHAEL (_in a joyous transport_). Say it again, father, say it again!
+
+MR. DARLING (_witheringly_). Thank you. (_Goaded by a suspiciously
+crooked smile on_ MRS. DARLING’S _face_) I warn you, Mary, 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 thrown into the streets.
+
+  (_The children blanch as they grasp the gravity of the situation._)
+
+MRS. DARLING. Let me try, dear.
+
+  (_In a terrible silence their progeny cluster round them. Will she
+  succeed? Their fate depends on it. She fails--no, she succeeds.
+  In another moment they are wildly gay, romping round the room on
+  each other’s shoulders. Father is even a better horse than mother._
+  MICHAEL _is dropped upon his bed_, WENDY _retires to prepare for
+  hers_, JOHN _runs from_ NANA, _who has reappeared with the bath
+  towel_.)
+
+JOHN (_rebellious_). I won’t be bathed. You needn’t think it.
+
+MR. DARLING (_in the grand manner_). Go and be bathed at once, sir.
+
+  (_With bent head_ JOHN _follows_ NANA _into the bathroom_. MR.
+  DARLING _swells_.)
+
+MICHAEL (_as he is put between the sheets_). Mother, how did you get to
+know me?
+
+MR. DARLING. A little less noise there.
+
+MICHAEL (_growing solemn_). At what time was I born, mother?
+
+MRS. DARLING. At two o’clock in the night-time, dearest.
+
+MICHAEL. Oh, mother, I hope I didn’t wake you.
+
+MRS. DARLING. They are rather sweet, don’t you think, George?
+
+MR. DARLING (_doting_). There is not their equal on earth, and they are
+ours, ours!
+
+  (_Unfortunately_ NANA _has come from the bathroom for a sponge and
+  she collides with his trousers, the first pair he has ever had with
+  braid on them_.)
+
+MR. DARLING. Mary, it is too bad; just look at this; covered with
+hairs. Clumsy, clumsy!
+
+  (NANA _goes, a drooping figure_.)
+
+MRS. DARLING. Let me brush you, dear.
+
+  (_Once more she is successful. They are now by the fire, and_ MICHAEL
+  _is in bed doing idiotic things with a teddy bear_.)
+
+MR. DARLING (_depressed_). I sometimes think, Mary, that it is a
+mistake to have a dog for a nurse.
+
+MRS. DARLING. George, Nana is a treasure.
+
+MR. DARLING. No doubt; but I have an uneasy feeling at times that she
+looks upon the children as puppies.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_rather faintly_). Oh no, dear one, I am sure she knows
+they have souls.
+
+MR. DARLING (_profoundly_). I wonder, I wonder.
+
+  (_The opportunity has come for her to tell him of something that is
+  on her mind._)
+
+MRS. DARLING. George, we must keep Nana. I will tell you why. (_Her
+seriousness impresses him._) My dear, when I came into this room
+to-night I saw a face at the window.
+
+MR. DARLING (_incredulous_). A face at the window, three floors up?
+Pooh!
+
+MRS. DARLING. It was the face of a little boy; he was trying to get in.
+George, this is not the first time I have seen that boy.
+
+MR. DARLING (_beginning to think that this may be a man’s job_). Oho!
+
+MRS. DARLING (_making sure that_ MICHAEL _does not hear_). The first
+time was a week ago. It was Nana’s night out, and I had been drowsing
+here by the fire when suddenly I felt a draught, as if the window were
+open. I looked round and I saw that boy--in the room.
+
+MR. DARLING. In the room?
+
+MRS. DARLING. I screamed. Just then Nana came back and she at once
+sprang at him. The boy leapt for the window. She pulled down the sash
+quickly, but was too late to catch him.
+
+MR. DARLING (_who knows he would not have been too late_). I thought so!
+
+MRS. DARLING. Wait. The boy escaped, but his shadow had not time to get
+out; down came the window and cut it clean off.
+
+MR. DARLING (_heavily_). Mary, Mary, why didn’t you keep that shadow?
+
+MRS. DARLING (_scoring_). I did. I rolled it up, George; and here it is.
+
+  (_She produces it from a drawer. They unroll and examine the flimsy
+  thing, which is not more material than a puff of smoke, and if let
+  go would probably float into the ceiling without discolouring it.
+  Yet it has human shape. As they nod their heads over it they present
+  the most satisfying picture on earth, two happy parents conspiring
+  cosily by the fire for the good of their children_.)
+
+MR. DARLING. It is nobody I know, but he does look a scoundrel.
+
+MRS. DARLING. I think he comes back to get his shadow, George.
+
+MR. DARLING (_meaning that the miscreant has now a father to deal
+with_). I dare say. (_He sees himself telling the story to the other
+stools at the office._) There is money in this, my love. I shall take
+it to the British Museum to-morrow and have it priced.
+
+  (_The shadow is rolled up and replaced in the drawer._)
+
+MRS. DARLING (_like a guilty person_). George, I have not told you all;
+I am afraid to.
+
+MR. DARLING (_who knows exactly the right moment to treat a woman as a
+beloved child_). Cowardy, cowardy custard.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_pouting_). No, I’m not.
+
+MR. DARLING. Oh yes, you are.
+
+MRS. DARLING. George, I’m not.
+
+MR. DARLING. Then why not tell? (_Thus cleverly soothed she goes on._)
+
+MRS. DARLING. The boy was not alone that first time. He was accompanied
+by--I don’t know how to describe it; by a ball of light, not as big as
+my fist, but it darted about the room like a living thing.
+
+MR. DARLING (_though open-minded_). That is very unusual. It escaped
+with the boy?
+
+MRS DARLING. Yes. (_Sliding her hand into his._) George, what can all
+this mean?
+
+MR. DARLING (_ever ready_). What indeed!
+
+  (_This intimate scene is broken by the return of_ NANA _with a bottle
+  in her mouth_.)
+
+MRS. DARLING (_at once dissembling_). What is that, Nana? Ah, of
+course; Michael, it is your medicine.
+
+MICHAEL (_promptly_). Won’t take it.
+
+MR. DARLING (_recalling his youth_). Be a man, Michael.
+
+MICHAEL. Won’t.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_weakly_). I’ll get you a lovely chocky to take after it.
+(_She leaves the room, though her husband calls after her._)
+
+MR. DARLING. Mary, don’t pamper him. When I was your age, Michael, I
+took medicine without a murmur. I said ‘Thank you, kind parents, for
+giving me bottles to make me well.’
+
+  (WENDY, _who has appeared in her nightgown, hears this and believes_.)
+
+WENDY. That medicine you sometimes take is much nastier, isn’t it,
+father?
+
+MR. DARLING (_valuing her support_). Ever so must nastier. And as an
+example to you, Michael, I would take it now (_thankfully_) if I hadn’t
+lost the bottle.
+
+WENDY (_always glad to be of service_). I know where it is, father.
+I’ll fetch it.
+
+  (_She is gone before he can stop her. He turns for help to_ JOHN,
+  _who has come from the bathroom attired for bed_.)
+
+MR. DARLING. John, it is the most beastly stuff. It is that sticky
+sweet kind.
+
+JOHN (_who is perhaps still playing at parents_). Never mind, father,
+it will soon be over.
+
+  (_A spasm of ill-will to_ JOHN _cuts through_ MR. DARLING, _and is
+  gone_. WENDY _returns panting_.)
+
+WENDY. Here it is, father; I have been as quick as I could.
+
+MR. DARLING (_with a sarcasm that is completely thrown away on her_).
+You have been wonderfully quick, precious quick!
+
+  (_He is now at the foot of_ MICHAEL’S _bed_, NANA _is by its side,
+  holding the medicine spoon insinuatingly in her mouth_.)
+
+WENDY (_proudly, as she pours out_ MR. DARLING’S _medicine_). Michael,
+now you will see how father takes it.
+
+MR. DARLING (_hedging_). Michael first.
+
+MICHAEL (_full of unworthy suspicions_). Father first.
+
+MR. DARLING. It will make me sick, you know.
+
+JOHN (_lightly_). Come on, father.
+
+MR. DARLING. Hold your tongue, sir.
+
+WENDY (_disturbed_). I thought you took it quite easily, father, saying
+‘Thank you, kind parents, for----’
+
+MR. DARLING. That is not the point; the point is that there is more in
+my glass than in Michael’s spoon. It isn’t fair, I swear though it were
+with my last breath, it is not fair.
+
+MICHAEL (_coldly_). Father, I’m waiting.
+
+MR. DARLING. It’s all very well to say you are waiting; so am I waiting.
+
+MICHAEL. Father’s a cowardy custard.
+
+MR. DARLING. So are you a cowardy custard.
+
+  (_They are now glaring at each other._)
+
+MICHAEL. I am not frightened.
+
+MR. DARLING. Neither am I frightened.
+
+MICHAEL. Well, then, take it.
+
+MR. DARLING. Well, then, you take it.
+
+WENDY (_butting in again_). Why not take it at the same time?
+
+MR. DARLING (_haughtily_). Certainly. Are you ready, Michael?
+
+WENDY (_as nothing has happened_). One--two--three.
+
+  (MICHAEL _partakes, but_ MR. DARLING _resorts to hanky-panky_.)
+
+JOHN. Father hasn’t taken his!
+
+  (MICHAEL _howls_.)
+
+WENDY (_inexpressibly pained_). Oh father!
+
+MR. DARLING (_who has been hiding the glass behind him_). What do you
+mean by ‘oh father’? Stop that row, Michael. I meant to take mine but
+I--missed it. (NANA _shakes her head sadly over him, and goes into
+the bathroom. They are all looking as if they did not admire him, and
+nothing so dashes a temperamental man._) I say, I have just thought
+of a splendid joke. (_They brighten._) I shall pour my medicine
+into Nana’s bowl, and she will drink it thinking it is milk! (_The
+pleasantry does not appeal, but he prepares the joke, listening for
+appreciation._)
+
+WENDY. Poor darling Nana!
+
+MR. DARLING. You silly little things; to your beds every one of you; I
+am ashamed of you.
+
+  (_They steal to their beds as_ MRS. DARLING _returns with the
+  chocolate_.)
+
+MRS. DARLING. Well, is it all over?
+
+MICHAEL. Father didn’t----(_Father glares._)
+
+MR. DARLING. All over, dear, quite satisfactorily. (NANA _comes back_.)
+Nana, good dog, good girl; I have put a little milk into your bowl.
+(_The bowl is by the kennel, and_ NANA _begins to lap, only begins. She
+retreats into the kennel._)
+
+MRS. DARLING. What is the matter, Nana?
+
+MR. DARLING (_uneasily_). Nothing, nothing.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_smelling the bowl_). George, it is your medicine!
+
+  (_The children break into lamentation. He gives his wife an
+  imploring look; he is begging for one smile, but does not get it. In
+  consequence he goes from bad to worse._)
+
+MR. DARLING. It was only a joke. Much good my wearing myself to the
+bone trying to be funny in this house.
+
+WENDY (_on her knees by the kennel_). Father, Nana is crying.
+
+MR. DARLING. Coddle her; nobody coddles me. Oh dear no. I am only the
+bread-winner, why should I be coddled? Why, why, why?
+
+MRS. DARLING. George, not so loud; the servants will hear you.
+
+  (_There is only one maid, absurdly small too, but they have got into
+  the way of calling her the servants._)
+
+MR. DARLING (_defiant_). Let them hear me; bring in the whole world.
+(_The desperate man, who has not been in fresh air for days, has now
+lost all self-control._) I refuse to allow that dog to lord it in my
+nursery for one hour longer. (NANA _supplicates him_.) In vain, in
+vain, the proper place for you is the yard, and there you go to be tied
+up this instant.
+
+  (NANA _again retreats into the kennel, and the children add their
+  prayers to hers_.)
+
+MRS. DARLING (_who knows how contrite he will be for this presently_).
+George, George, remember what I told you about that boy.
+
+MR. DARLING. Am I master in this house or is she? (_To_ NANA
+_fiercely_) Come along. (_He thunders at her, but she indicates that
+she has reasons not worth troubling him with for remaining where she
+is. He resorts to a false bonhomie._) There, there, did she think
+he was angry with her, poor Nana? (_She wriggles a response in the
+affirmative._) Good Nana, pretty Nana. (_She has seldom been called
+pretty, and it has the old effect. She plays rub-a-dub with her paws,
+which is how a dog blushes._) She will come to her kind master, won’t
+she? won’t she? (_She advances, retreats, waggles her head, her tail,
+and eventually goes to him. He seizes her collar in an iron grip and
+amid the cries of his progeny drags her from the room. They listen,
+for her remonstrances are not inaudible._)
+
+MRS. DARLING. Be brave, my dears.
+
+WENDY. He is chaining Nana up!
+
+  (_This unfortunately is what he is doing, though we cannot see
+  him. Let us hope that he then retires to his study, looks up the
+  word ‘temper’ in his_ Thesaurus, _and under the influence of those
+  benign pages becomes a better man. In the meantime the children have
+  been put to bed in unwonted silence, and_ MRS. DARLING _lights the
+  night-lights over the beds_.)
+
+JOHN (_as the barking below goes on_). She is awfully unhappy.
+
+WENDY. That is not Nana’s unhappy bark. That is her bark when she
+smells danger.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_remembering that boy_). Danger! Are you sure, Wendy?
+
+WENDY (_the one of the family, for there is one in every family, who
+can be trusted to know or not to know_). Oh yes.
+
+  (_Her mother looks this way and that from the window._)
+
+JOHN. Is anything there?
+
+MRS. DARLING. All quite quiet and still. Oh, how I wish I was not going
+out to dinner to-night.
+
+MICHAEL. Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?
+
+MRS. DARLING. Nothing, precious. They are the eyes a mother leaves
+behind her to guard her children.
+
+  (_Nevertheless we may be sure she means to tell_ LIZA, _the little
+  maid, to look in on them frequently till she comes home. She goes
+  from bed to bed, after her custom, tucking them in and crooning a
+  lullaby._)
+
+MICHAEL (_drowsily_). Mother, I’m glad of you.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_with a last look round, her hand on the switch_). Dear
+night-lights that protect my sleeping babes, burn clear and steadfast
+to-night.
+
+  (_The nursery darkens and she is gone, intentionally leaving the
+  door ajar. Something uncanny is going to happen, we expect, for a
+  quiver has passed through the room, just sufficient to touch the
+  night-lights. They blink three times one after the other and go out,
+  precisely as children (whom familiarity has made them resemble) fall
+  asleep. There is another light in the room now, no larger than_ MRS.
+  DARLING’S _fist, and in the time we have taken to say this it has
+  been into the drawers and wardrobe and searched pockets, as it darts
+  about looking for a certain shadow. Then the window is blown open,
+  probably by the smallest and therefore most mischievous star, and_
+  PETER PAN _flies into the room. In so far as he is dressed at all it
+  is in autumn leaves and cobwebs._)
+
+PETER (_in a whisper_). Tinker Bell, Tink, are you there? (_A jug
+lights up._) Oh, do come out of that jug. (TINK _flashes hither and
+thither._) Do you know where they put it? (_The answer comes as of a
+tinkle of bells; it is the fairy language._ PETER _can speak it, but
+it bores him_.) Which big box? This one? But which drawer? Yes, do
+show me. (TINK _pops into the drawer where the shadow is, but before_
+PETER _can reach it_, WENDY _moves in her sleep. He flies onto the
+mantelshelf as a hiding-place. Then, as she has not waked, he flutters
+over the beds as an easy way to observe the occupants, closes the
+window softly, wafts himself to the drawer and scatters its contents to
+the floor, as kings on their wedding day toss ha’pence to the crowds.
+In his joy at finding his shadow he forgets that he has shut up_ TINK
+_in the drawer. He sits on the floor with the shadow, confident that he
+and it will join like drops of water. Then he tries to stick it on with
+soap from the bathroom, and this failing also, he subsides dejectedly
+on the floor. This wakens_ WENDY, _who sits up, and is pleasantly
+interested to see a stranger._)
+
+WENDY (_courteously_). Boy, why are you crying?
+
+  (_He jumps up, and crossing to the foot of the bed bows to her in the
+  fairy way._ WENDY, _impressed, bows to him from the bed_.)
+
+PETER. What is your name?
+
+WENDY (_well satisfied_). Wendy Moira Angela Darling. What is yours?
+
+PETER (_finding it lamentably brief_). Peter Pan.
+
+WENDY. Is that all?
+
+PETER (_biting his lip_). Yes.
+
+WENDY (_politely_). I am so sorry.
+
+PETER. It doesn’t matter.
+
+WENDY. Where do you live?
+
+PETER. Second to the right and then straight on till morning.
+
+WENDY. What a funny address!
+
+PETER. No, it isn’t.
+
+WENDY. I mean, is that what they put on the letters?
+
+PETER. Don’t get any letters.
+
+WENDY. But your mother gets letters?
+
+PETER. Don’t have a mother.
+
+WENDY. Peter!
+
+  (_She leaps out of bed to put her arms round him, but he draws back;
+  he does not know why, but he knows he must draw back._)
+
+PETER. You mustn’t touch me.
+
+WENDY. Why?
+
+PETER. No one must ever touch me.
+
+WENDY. Why?
+
+PETER. I don’t know.
+
+  (_He is never touched by any one in the play._)
+
+WENDY. No wonder you were crying.
+
+PETER. I wasn’t crying. But I can’t get my shadow to stick on.
+
+WENDY. It has come off! How awful. (_Looking at the spot where he had
+lain._) Peter, you have been trying to stick it on with soap!
+
+PETER (_snappily_). Well then?
+
+WENDY. It must be sewn on.
+
+PETER. What is ‘sewn’?
+
+WENDY. You are dreadfully ignorant.
+
+PETER. No, I’m not.
+
+WENDY. I will sew it on for you, my little man. But we must have more
+light. (_She touches something, and to his astonishment the room is
+illuminated._) Sit here. I dare say it will hurt a little.
+
+PETER (_a recent remark of hers rankling_). I never cry. (_She seems to
+attach the shadow. He tests the combination._) It isn’t quite itself
+yet.
+
+WENDY. Perhaps I should have ironed it. (_It awakes and is as glad to
+be back with him as he to have it. He and his shadow dance together.
+He is showing off now. He crows like a cock. He would fly in order to
+impress_ WENDY _further if he knew that there is anything unusual in
+that_.)
+
+PETER. Wendy, look, look; oh the cleverness of me!
+
+WENDY. You conceit; of course I did nothing!
+
+PETER. You did a little.
+
+WENDY (_wounded_). A little! If I am no use I can at least withdraw.
+
+  (_With one haughty leap she is again in bed with the sheet over her
+  face. Popping on to the end of the bed the artful one appeals._)
+
+PETER. Wendy, don’t withdraw. I can’t help crowing, Wendy, when I’m
+pleased with myself. Wendy, one girl is worth more than twenty boys.
+
+WENDY (_peeping over the sheet_). You really think so, Peter?
+
+PETER. Yes, I do.
+
+WENDY. I think it’s perfectly sweet of you, and I shall get up again.
+(_They sit together on the side of the bed._) I shall give you a kiss
+if you like.
+
+PETER. Thank you. (_He holds out his hand._)
+
+WENDY (_aghast_). Don’t you know what a kiss is?
+
+PETER. I shall know when you give it me. (_Not to hurt his feelings she
+gives him her thimble._) Now shall I give you a kiss?
+
+WENDY (_primly_). If you please. (_He pulls an acorn button off his
+person and bestows it on her. She is shocked but considerate._) I will
+wear it on this chain round my neck. Peter, how old are you?
+
+PETER (_blithely_). I don’t know, but quite young, Wendy. I ran away
+the day I was born.
+
+WENDY. Ran away, why?
+
+PETER. Because I heard father and mother talking of what I was to be
+when I became a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun;
+so I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long time among the
+fairies.
+
+WENDY (_with great eyes_). You know fairies, Peter!
+
+PETER (_surprised that this should be a recommendation_). Yes, but they
+are nearly all dead now. (_Baldly_) You see, Wendy, when the first baby
+laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and
+they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
+And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So
+there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.
+
+WENDY (_breathlessly_). Ought to be? Isn’t there?
+
+PETER. Oh no. Children know such a lot now. Soon they 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. (_He skips about
+heartlessly._)
+
+WENDY. Poor things!
+
+PETER (_to whom this statement recalls a forgotten friend_). I can’t
+think where she has gone. Tinker Bell, Tink, where are you?
+
+WENDY (_thrilling_). Peter, you don’t mean to tell me that there is a
+fairy in this room!
+
+PETER (_flitting about in search_). She came with me. You don’t hear
+anything, do you?
+
+WENDY. I hear--the only sound I hear is like a tinkle of bells.
+
+PETER. That is the fairy language. I hear it too.
+
+WENDY. It seems to come from over there.
+
+PETER (_with shameless glee_). Wendy, I believe I shut her up in that
+drawer!
+
+  (_He releases_ TINK, _who darts about in a fury using language it is
+  perhaps as well we don’t understand_.)
+
+You needn’t say that; I’m very sorry, but how could I know you were in
+the drawer?
+
+WENDY (_her eyes dancing in pursuit of the delicious creature_). Oh,
+Peter, if only she would stand still and let me see her!
+
+PETER (_indifferently_). They hardly ever stand still.
+
+  (_To show that she can do even this_ TINK _pauses between two ticks
+  of the cuckoo clock_.)
+
+WENDY. I see her, the lovely! where is she now?
+
+PETER. She is behind the clock. Tink, this lady wishes you were her
+fairy. (_The answer comes immediately._)
+
+WENDY. What does she say?
+
+PETER. She is not very polite. She says you are a great ugly girl, and
+that she is my fairy. You know, Tink, you can’t be my fairy because I
+am a gentleman and you are a lady.
+
+  (TINK _replies_.)
+
+WENDY. What did she say?
+
+PETER. She said ‘You silly ass.’ She is quite a common girl, you know.
+She is called Tinker Bell because she mends the fairy pots and kettles.
+
+  (_They have reached a chair_, WENDY _in the ordinary way and_ PETER
+  _through a hole in the back_.)
+
+WENDY. Where do you live now?
+
+PETER. With the lost boys.
+
+WENDY. Who are they?
+
+PETER. They are the children who fall out of their prams when the nurse
+is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they
+are sent far away to the Never Land. I’m captain.
+
+WENDY. What fun it must be.
+
+PETER (_craftily_). Yes, but we are rather lonely. You see, Wendy, we
+have no female companionship.
+
+WENDY. Are none of the other children girls?
+
+PETER. Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their
+prams.
+
+WENDY. Peter, it is perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls. John
+there just despises us.
+
+  (PETER, _for the first time, has a good look at_ JOHN. _He then
+  neatly tumbles him out of bed._)
+
+You wicked! you are not captain here. (_She bends over her brother who
+is prone on the floor._) After all he hasn’t wakened, and you meant to
+be kind. (_Having now done her duty she forgets_ JOHN, _who blissfully
+sleeps on._) Peter, you may give me a kiss.
+
+PETER (_cynically_). I thought you would want it back.
+
+  (_He offers her the thimble._)
+
+WENDY (_artfully_). Oh dear, I didn’t mean a kiss, Peter. I meant a
+thimble.
+
+PETER (_only half placated_). What is that?
+
+WENDY. It is like this. (_She leans forward to give a demonstration,
+but something prevents the meeting of their faces._)
+
+PETER (_satisfied_). Now shall I give you a thimble?
+
+WENDY. If you please. (_Before he can even draw near she screams._)
+
+PETER. What is it?
+
+WENDY. It was exactly as if some one were pulling my hair!
+
+PETER. That must have been Tink. I never knew her so naughty before.
+
+  (TINK _speaks. She is in the jug again._)
+
+WENDY. What does she say?
+
+PETER. She says she will do that every time I give you a thimble.
+
+WENDY. But why?
+
+PETER (_equally nonplussed_). Why, Tink? (_He has to translate the
+answer._) She said ‘You silly ass’ again.
+
+WENDY. She is very impertinent. (_They are sitting on the floor now._)
+Peter, why did you come to our nursery window?
+
+PETER. To try to hear stories. None of us knows any stories.
+
+WENDY. How perfectly awful!
+
+PETER. Do you know why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to
+listen to the stories. Wendy, your mother was telling you such a lovely
+story.
+
+WENDY. Which story was it?
+
+PETER. About the prince, and he couldn’t find the lady who wore the
+glass slipper.
+
+WENDY. That was Cinderella. Peter, he found her and they were happy
+ever after.
+
+PETER. I am glad. (_They have worked their way along the floor close to
+each other, but he now jumps up._)
+
+WENDY. Where are you going?
+
+PETER (_already on his way to the window_). To tell the other boys.
+
+WENDY. Don’t go, Peter. I know lots of stories. The stories I could
+tell to the boys!
+
+PETER (_gleaming_). Come on! We’ll fly.
+
+WENDY. Fly? You can fly!
+
+  (_How he would like to rip those stories out of her; he is dangerous
+  now._)
+
+PETER. Wendy, come with me.
+
+WENDY. Oh dear, I mustn’t. Think of mother. Besides, I can’t fly.
+
+PETER. I’ll teach you.
+
+WENDY. How lovely to fly!
+
+PETER. I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back and then away we
+go. Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying
+about with me, saying funny things to the stars. There are mermaids,
+Wendy, with long tails. (_She just succeeds in remaining on the nursery
+floor._) Wendy, how we should all respect you.
+
+  (_At this she strikes her colours._)
+
+WENDY. Of course it’s awfully fas-cin-a-ting! Would you teach John and
+Michael to fly too?
+
+PETER (_indifferently_). If you like.
+
+WENDY (_playing rum-tum on John_). John, wake up; there is a boy here
+who is to teach us to fly.
+
+JOHN. Is there? Then I shall get up. (_He raises his head from the
+floor._) Hullo, I am up!
+
+WENDY. Michael, open your eyes. This boy is to teach us to fly.
+
+  (_The sleepers are at once as awake as their father’s razor; but
+  before a question can be asked_ NANA’S _bark is heard_.)
+
+JOHN. Out with the light, quick, hide!
+
+  (_When the maid_ LIZA, _who is so small that when she says she will
+  never see ten again one can scarcely believe her, enters with a
+  firm hand on the troubled_ NANA’S _chain the room is in comparative
+  darkness_.)
+
+LIZA. There, you suspicious brute, they are perfectly safe, aren’t
+they? Every one of the little angels sound asleep in bed. Listen to
+their gentle breathing. (NANA’S _sense of smell here helps to her
+undoing instead of hindering it. She knows that they are in the room._
+MICHAEL, _who is behind the window curtain, is so encouraged by_ LIZA’S
+_last remark that he breathes too loudly_. NANA _knows that kind of
+breathing and tries to break from her keeper’s control_.) No more of
+it, Nana. (_Wagging a finger at her_) I warn you if you bark again I
+shall go straight for master and missus and bring them home from the
+party, and then won’t master whip you just! Come along, you naughty dog.
+
+  (_The unhappy_ NANA _is led away. The children emerge exulting from
+  their various hiding-places. In their brief absence from the scene
+  strange things have been done to them; but it is not for us to reveal
+  a mysterious secret of the stage. They look just the same._)
+
+JOHN. I say, can you really fly?
+
+PETER. Look! (_He is now over their heads._)
+
+WENDY. Oh, how sweet!
+
+PETER. I’m sweet, oh, I am sweet!
+
+  (_It looks so easy that they try it first from the floor and then
+  from their beds, without encouraging results._)
+
+JOHN (_rubbing his knees_). How do you do it?
+
+PETER (_descending_). You just think lovely wonderful thoughts and they
+lift you up in the air. (_He is off again._)
+
+JOHN. You are so nippy at it; couldn’t you do it very slowly once?
+(PETER _does it slowly_.) I’ve got it now, Wendy. (_He tries; no, he
+has not got it, poor stay-at-home, though he knows the names of all the
+counties in England and_ PETER _does not know one_.)
+
+PETER. I must blow the fairy dust on you first. (_Fortunately his
+garments are smeared with it and he blows some dust on each._) Now,
+try; try from the bed. Just wriggle your shoulders this way, and then
+let go.
+
+  (_The gallant_ MICHAEL _is the first to let go, and is borne across
+  the room_.)
+
+MICHAEL (_with a yell that should have disturbed_ LIZA). I flewed!
+
+  (JOHN _lets go, and meets_ WENDY _near the bathroom door though they
+  had both aimed in an opposite direction_.)
+
+WENDY. Oh, lovely!
+
+JOHN (_tending to be upside down_). How ripping!
+
+MICHAEL (_playing whack on a chair_). I do like it!
+
+THE THREE. Look at me, look at me, look at me!
+
+  (_They are not nearly so elegant in the air as_ PETER, _but their
+  heads have bumped the ceiling, and there is nothing more delicious
+  than that_.)
+
+JOHN (_who can even go backwards_). I say, why shouldn’t we go out?
+
+PETER. There are pirates.
+
+JOHN. Pirates! (_He grabs his tall Sunday hat._) Let us go at once!
+
+  (TINK _does not like it. She darts at their hair. From down below in
+  the street the lighted window must present an unwonted spectacle: the
+  shadows of children revolving in the room like a merry-go-round.
+  This is perhaps what_ MR. _and_ MRS. DARLING _see as they come
+  hurrying home from the party, brought by_ NANA _who, you may be sure,
+  has broken her chain._ PETER’S _accomplice, the little star, has seen
+  them coming, and again the window blows open_.)
+
+PETER (_as if he had heard the star whisper_ Cave). Now come!
+
+  (_Breaking the circle he flies out of the window over the trees of
+  the square and over the house-tops, and the others follow like a
+  flight of birds. The broken-hearted father and mother arrive just
+  in time to get a nip from_ TINK _as she too sets out for the Never
+  Land_.)
+
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+THE NEVER LAND
+
+
+_When the blind goes up all is so dark that you scarcely know it has
+gone up. This is because if you were to see the island bang (as Peter
+would say) the wonders of it might hurt your eyes. If you all came in
+spectacles perhaps you could see it bang, but to make a rule of that
+kind would be a pity. The first thing seen is merely some whitish
+dots trudging along the sward, and you can guess from their tinkling
+that they are probably fairies of the commoner sort going home afoot
+from some party and having a cheery tiff by the way. Then Peter’s
+star wakes up, and in the blink of it, which is much stronger than in
+our stars, you can make out masses of trees, and you think you see
+wild beasts stealing past to drink, though what you see is not the
+beasts themselves but only the shadows of them. They are really out
+pictorially to greet Peter in the way they think he would like them to
+greet him; and for the same reason the mermaids basking in the lagoon
+beyond the trees are carefully combing their hair; and for the same
+reason the pirates are landing invisibly from the longboat, invisibly
+to you but not to the redskins, whom none can see or hear because
+they are on the war-path. The whole island, in short, which has been
+having a slack time in Peter’s absence, is now in a ferment because
+the tidings have leaked out that he is on his way back; and everybody
+and everything know that they will catch it from him if they don’t
+give satisfaction. While you have been told this the sun (another of
+his servants) has been bestirring himself. Those of you who may have
+thought it wiser after all to begin this Act in spectacles may now take
+them off._
+
+_What you see is the Never Land. You have often half seen it before,
+or even three-quarters, after the night-lights were lit, and you might
+then have beached your coracle on it if you had not always at the great
+moment fallen asleep. I dare say you have chucked things on to it, the
+things you can’t find in the morning. In the daytime you think the
+Never Land is only make-believe, and so it is to the likes of you, but
+this is the Never Land come true. It is an open-air scene, a forest,
+with a beautiful lagoon beyond but not really far away, for the Never
+Land is very compact, not large and sprawly with tedious distances
+between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. It is summer
+time on the trees and on the lagoon but winter on the river, which
+is not remarkable on Peter’s island where all the four seasons may
+pass while you are filling a jug at the well. Peter’s home is at this
+very spot, but you could not point out the way into it even if you
+were told which is the entrance, not even if you were told that there
+are seven of them. You know now because you have just seen one of the
+lost boys emerge. The holes in these seven great hollow trees are the
+‘doors’ down to Peter’s home, and he made seven because, despite his
+cleverness, he thought seven boys must need seven doors._
+
+_The boy who has emerged from his tree is Slightly, who has perhaps
+been driven from the abode below by companions less musical than
+himself. Quite possibly a genius, Slightly has with him his home-made
+whistle to which he capers entrancingly, with no audience save a Never
+ostrich which is also musically inclined. Unable to imitate Slightly’s
+graces the bird falls so low as to burlesque them and is driven from
+the entertainment. Other lost boys climb up the trunks or drop from
+branches, and now we see the six of them, all in the skins of animals
+they think they have shot, and so round and furry in them that if
+they fall they roll. Tootles is not the least brave though the most
+unfortunate of this gallant band. He has been in fewer adventures
+than any of them because the big things constantly happen while he has
+stepped round the corner; he will go off, for instance, in some quiet
+hour to gather firewood, and then when he returns the others will be
+sweeping up the blood. Instead of souring his nature this has sweetened
+it and he is the humblest of the band. Nibs is more gay and debonair,
+Slightly more conceited. Slightly thinks he remembers the days before
+he was lost, with their manners and customs. Curly is a pickle, and
+so often has he had to deliver up his person when Peter said sternly,
+‘Stand forth the one who did this thing,’ that now he stands forth
+whether he has done it or not. The other two are First Twin and Second
+Twin, who cannot be described because we should probably be describing
+the wrong one. Hunkering on the ground or peeping out of their holes,
+the six are not unlike village gossips gathered round the pump._
+
+TOOTLES. Has Peter come back yet, Slightly?
+
+SLIGHTLY (_with a solemnity that he thinks suits the occasion_). No,
+Tootles, no.
+
+  (_They are like dogs waiting for the master to tell them that the day
+  has begun._)
+
+CURLY (_as if_ PETER _might be listening_). I do wish he would come
+back.
+
+TOOTLES. I am always afraid of the pirates when Peter is not here to
+protect us.
+
+SLIGHTLY. I am not afraid of pirates. Nothing frightens me. But I do
+wish Peter would come back and tell us whether he has heard anything
+more about Cinderella.
+
+SECOND TWIN (_with diffidence_). Slightly, I dreamt last night that the
+prince found Cinderella.
+
+FIRST TWIN (_who is intellectually the superior of the two_). Twin, I
+think you should not have dreamt that, for I didn’t, and Peter may say
+we oughtn’t to dream differently, being twins, you know.
+
+TOOTLES. I am awfully anxious about Cinderella. You see, not knowing
+anything about my own mother I am fond of thinking that she was rather
+like Cinderella.
+
+  (_This is received with derision._)
+
+NIBS. All I remember about my mother is that she often said to father,
+‘Oh how I wish I had a cheque book of my own.’ I don’t know what a
+cheque book is, but I should just love to give my mother one.
+
+SLIGHTLY (_as usual_). My mother was fonder of me than your mothers
+were of you. (_Uproar._) Oh yes, she was. Peter had to make up names
+for you, but my mother had wrote my name on the pinafore I was lost in.
+‘Slightly Soiled’; that’s my name.
+
+  (_They fall upon him pugnaciously; not that they are really worrying
+  about their mothers, who are now as important to them as a piece of
+  string, but because any excuse is good enough for a shindy. Not for
+  long is he belaboured, for a sound is heard that sends them scurrying
+  down their holes: in a second of time the scene is bereft of human
+  life. What they have heard from near-by is a verse of the dreadful
+  song with which on the Never Land the pirates stealthily trumpet
+  their approach--_
+
+      Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life,
+      The flag of skull and bones,
+      A merry hour, a hempen rope,
+      And hey for Davy Jones!
+
+  _The pirates appear upon the frozen river dragging a raft, on which
+  reclines among cushions that dark and fearful man_, CAPTAIN JAS
+  HOOK. _A more villainous-looking brotherhood of men never hung in a
+  row on Execution dock. Here, his great arms bare, pieces of eight
+  in his ears as ornaments, is the handsome_ CECCO, _who cut his name
+  on the back of the governor of the prison at Gao. Heavier in the
+  pull is the gigantic black who has had many names since the first
+  one terrified dusky children on the banks of the Guidjo-mo._ BILL
+  JUKES _comes next, every inch of him tattooed, the same_ JUKES _who
+  got six dozen on the_ Walrus _from_ FLINT. _Following these are_
+  COOKSON, _said to be_ BLACK MURPHY’S _brother (but this was never
+  proved); and_ GENTLEMAN STARKEY, _once an usher in a school; and_
+  SKYLIGHTS _(Morgan’s Skylights); and_ NOODLER, _whose hands are
+  fixed on backwards; and the spectacled boatswain_, SMEE, _the only
+  Nonconformist in_ HOOK’S _crew; and other ruffians long known and
+  feared on the Spanish main_.
+
+  _Cruelest jewel in that dark setting is_ HOOK _himself, cadaverous
+  and blackavised, his hair dressed in long curls which look like black
+  candles about to melt, his eyes blue as the forget-me-not and of a
+  profound insensibility, save when he claws, at which time a red spot
+  appears in them. He has an iron hook instead of a right hand, and
+  it is with this he claws. He is never more sinister than when he is
+  most polite, and the elegance of his diction, the distinction of
+  his demeanour, show him one of a different class from his crew, a
+  solitary among uncultured companions. This courtliness impresses even
+  his victims on the high seas, who note that he always says ‘Sorry’
+  when prodding them along the plank. A man of indomitable courage, the
+  only thing at which he flinches is the sight of his own blood, which
+  is thick and of an unusual colour. At his public school they said of
+  him that he ‘bled yellow.’ In dress he apes the dandiacal associated
+  with Charles II., having heard it said in an earlier period of his
+  career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts.
+  A holder of his own contrivance is in his mouth enabling him to smoke
+  two cigars at once. Those, however, who have seen him in the flesh,
+  which is an inadequate term for his earthly tenement, agree that the
+  grimmest part of him is his iron claw._
+
+  _They continue their distasteful singing as they disembark--_
+
+      Avast, belay, yo ho, heave to,
+      A-pirating we go,
+      And if we’re parted by a shot
+      We’re sure to meet below!
+
+  NIBS, _the only one of the boys who has not sought safety in his
+  tree, is seen for a moment near the lagoon, and_ STARKEY’S _pistol is
+  at once upraised. The captain twists his hook in him._)
+
+STARKEY (_abject_). Captain, let go!
+
+HOOK. Put back that pistol, first.
+
+STARKEY. ’Twas one of those boys you hate; I could have shot him dead.
+
+HOOK. Ay, and the sound would have brought Tiger Lily’s redskins on
+us. Do you want to lose your scalp?
+
+SMEE (_wriggling his cutlass pleasantly_). That is true. Shall I after
+him, Captain, and tickle him with Johnny Corkscrew? Johnny is a silent
+fellow.
+
+HOOK. Not now. He is only one, and I want to mischief all the seven.
+Scatter and look for them. (_The boatswain whistles his instructions,
+and the men disperse on their frightful errand. With none to hear save_
+SMEE, HOOK _becomes confidential_.) Most of all I want their captain,
+Peter Pan. ’Twas he cut off my arm. I have waited long to shake his
+hand with this. (_Luxuriating_) Oh, I’ll tear him!
+
+SMEE (_always ready for a chat_). Yet I have oft heard you say your
+hook was worth a score of hands, for combing the hair and other homely
+uses.
+
+HOOK. If I was a mother I would pray to have my children born with this
+instead of that (_his left arm creeps nervously behind him. He has
+a galling remembrance_). Smee, Pan flung my arm to a crocodile that
+happened to be passing by.
+
+SMEE. I have often noticed your strange dread of crocodiles.
+
+HOOK (_pettishly_). Not of crocodiles but of that one crocodile. (_He
+lays bare a lacerated heart._) The brute liked my arm so much, Smee,
+that he has followed me ever since, from sea to sea, and from land to
+land, licking his lips for the rest of me.
+
+SMEE (_looking for the bright side_). In a way it is a sort of
+compliment.
+
+HOOK (_with dignity_). I want no such compliments; I want Peter Pan,
+who first gave the brute his taste for me. Smee, that crocodile would
+have had me before now, but by a lucky chance he swallowed a clock, and
+it goes tick, tick, tick, tick inside him; and so before he can reach
+me I hear the tick and bolt. (_He emits a hollow rumble._) Once I heard
+it strike six within him.
+
+SMEE (_sombrely_). Some day the clock will run down, and then he’ll get
+you.
+
+HOOK (_a broken man_). Ay, that is the fear that haunts me. (_He
+rises._) Smee, this seat is hot; odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I am
+burning.
+
+  (_He has been sitting, he thinks, on one of the island mushrooms,
+  which are of enormous size. But this is a hand-painted one placed
+  here in times of danger to conceal a chimney. They remove it, and
+  tell-tale smoke issues; also, alas, the sound of children’s voices._)
+
+SMEE. A chimney!
+
+HOOK (_avidly_). Listen! Smee, ’tis plain they live here, beneath the
+ground. (_He replaces the mushroom. His brain works tortuously._)
+
+SMEE. (_hopefully_). Unrip your plan, Captain.
+
+HOOK. To return to the boat and cook a large rich cake of jolly
+thickness with sugar on it, green sugar. There can be but one room
+below, for there is but one chimney. The silly moles had not the sense
+to see that they did not need a door apiece. We must leave the cake on
+the shore of the mermaids’ lagoon. These boys are always swimming about
+there, trying to catch the mermaids. They will find the cake and gobble
+it up, because, having no mother, they don’t know how dangerous ’tis to
+eat rich damp cake. They will die!
+
+SMEE (_fascinated_). It is the wickedest, prettiest policy ever I heard
+of.
+
+HOOK (_meaning well_). Shake hands on ’t.
+
+SMEE. No, Captain, no.
+
+  (_He has to link with the hook, but he does not join in the song._)
+
+HOOK.
+
+    Yo ho, yo ho, when I say ‘paw,’
+    By fear they’re overtook,
+    Naught’s left upon your bones when you
+    Have shaken hands with Hook!
+
+  (_Frightened by a tug at his hand_, SMEE _is joining in the chorus
+  when another sound stills them both. It is a tick, tick as of
+  a clock, whose significance_ HOOK _is, naturally, the first to
+  recognise. ‘The crocodile!’ he cries, and totters from the scene._
+  SMEE _follows. A huge crocodile, of one thought compact, passes
+  across, ticking, and oozes after them. The wood is now so silent that
+  you may be sure it is full of redskins._ TIGER LILY _comes first. She
+  is the belle of the Piccaninny tribe, whose braves would all have her
+  to wife, but she wards them off with a hatchet. She puts her ear to
+  the ground and listens, then beckons, and_ GREAT BIG LITTLE PANTHER
+  _and the tribe are around her, carpeting the ground. Far away some
+  one treads on a dry leaf._)
+
+TIGER LILY. Pirates! (_They do not draw their knives; the knives slip
+into their hands._) Have um scalps? What you say?
+
+PANTHER. Scalp um, oho, velly quick.
+
+THE BRAVES (_in corroboration_). Ugh, ugh, wah.
+
+  (_A fire is lit and they dance round and over it till they seem part
+  of the leaping flames._ TIGER LILY _invokes Manitou; the pipe of
+  peace is broken; and they crawl off like a long snake that has not
+  fed for many moons_. TOOTLES _peers after the tail and summons the
+  other boys, who issue from their holes_.)
+
+TOOTLES. They are gone.
+
+SLIGHTLY (_almost losing confidence in himself_). I do wish Peter was
+here.
+
+FIRST TWIN. H’sh! What is that? (_He is gazing at the lagoon and
+shrinks back._) It is wolves, and they are chasing Nibs!
+
+  (_The baying wolves are upon them quicker than any boy can scuttle
+  down his tree._)
+
+NIBS (_falling among his comrades_). Save me, save me!
+
+TOOTLES. What should we do?
+
+SECOND TWIN. What would Peter do?
+
+SLIGHTLY. Peter would look at them through his legs; let us do what
+Peter would do.
+
+  (_The boys advance backwards, looking between their legs at the
+  snarling red-eyed enemy, who trot away foiled._)
+
+FIRST TWIN (_swaggering_). We have saved you, Nibs. Did you see the
+pirates?
+
+NIBS (_sitting up, and agreeably aware that the centre of interest is
+now to pass to him_). No, but I saw a wonderfuller thing, Twin. (_All
+mouths open for the information to be dropped into them._) High over
+the lagoon I saw the loveliest great white bird. It is flying this way.
+(_They search the firmament._)
+
+TOOTLES. What kind of a bird, do you think?
+
+NIBS (_awed_). I don’t know; but it looked so weary, and as it flies it
+moans ‘Poor Wendy.’
+
+SLIGHTLY (_instantly_). I remember now there are birds called Wendies.
+
+FIRST TWIN (_who has flown to a high branch_). See, it comes, the
+Wendy! (_They all see it now._) How white it is! (_A dot of light is
+pursuing the bird malignantly._)
+
+TOOTLES. That is Tinker Bell. Tink is trying to hurt the Wendy. (_He
+makes a cup of his hands and calls_) Hullo, Tink! (_A response comes
+down in the fairy language._) She says Peter wants us to shoot the
+Wendy.
+
+NIBS. Let us do what Peter wishes.
+
+SLIGHTLY. Ay, shoot it; quick, bows and arrows.
+
+TOOTLES (_first with his bow_). Out of the way, Tink; I’ll shoot it.
+(_His bolt goes home, and_ WENDY, _who has been fluttering among the
+tree-tops in her white nightgown, falls straight to earth. No one could
+be more proud than_ TOOTLES.) I have shot the Wendy; Peter will be so
+pleased. (_From some tree on which_ TINK _is roosting comes the tinkle
+we can now translate, ‘You silly ass.’_ TOOTLES _falters_.) Why do you
+say that? (_The others feel that he may have blundered, and draw away
+from_ TOOTLES.)
+
+SLIGHTLY (_examining the fallen one more minutely_). This is no bird; I
+think it must be a lady.
+
+NIBS (_who would have preferred it to be a bird_). And Tootles has
+killed her.
+
+CURLY. Now I see, Peter was bringing her to us. (_They wonder for what
+object._)
+
+SECOND TWIN. To take care of us? (_Undoubtedly for some diverting
+purpose._)
+
+OMNES (_though every one of them had wanted to have a shot at her_).
+Oh, Tootles!
+
+TOOTLES (_gulping_). I did it. When ladies used to come to me in dreams
+I said ‘Pretty mother,’ but when she really came I shot her! (_He
+perceives the necessity of a solitary life for him._) Friends, good-bye.
+
+SEVERAL (_not very enthusiastic_). Don’t go.
+
+TOOTLES. I must; I am so afraid of Peter.
+
+  (_He has gone but a step toward oblivion when he is stopped by a
+  crowing as of some victorious cock._)
+
+OMNES. Peter!
+
+  (_They make a paling of themselves in front of_ WENDY _as_ PETER
+  _skims round the tree-tops and reaches earth._)
+
+PETER. Greeting, boys! (_Their silence chafes him._) I am back; why do
+you not cheer? Great news, boys, I have brought at last a mother for us
+all.
+
+SLIGHTLY (_vaguely_). Ay, ay.
+
+PETER. She flew this way; have you not seen her?
+
+SECOND TWIN (_as_ PETER _evidently thinks her important_). Oh mournful
+day!
+
+TOOTLES (_making a break in the paling_). Peter, I will show her to you.
+
+THE OTHERS (_closing the gap_). No, no.
+
+TOOTLES (_majestically_). Stand back all, and let Peter see.
+
+  (_The paling dissolves, and_ PETER _sees_ WENDY _prone on the
+  ground_.)
+
+PETER. Wendy, with an arrow in her heart! (_He plucks it out._) Wendy
+is dead. (_He is not so much pained as puzzled._)
+
+CURLY. I thought it was only flowers that die.
+
+PETER. Perhaps she is frightened at being dead? (_None of them can say
+as to that._) Whose arrow? (_Not one of them looks at_ TOOTLES.)
+
+TOOTLES. Mine, Peter.
+
+PETER (_raising it as a dagger_). Oh dastard hand!
+
+TOOTLES (_kneeling and baring his breast_). Strike, Peter; strike true.
+
+PETER (_undergoing a singular experience_). I cannot strike; there is
+something stays my hand.
+
+  (_In fact_ WENDY’S _arm has risen_.)
+
+NIBS. ’Tis she, the Wendy lady. See, her arm. (_To help a friend_) I
+think she said ‘Poor Tootles.’
+
+PETER (_investigating_). She lives!
+
+SLIGHTLY (_authoritatively_). The Wendy lady lives.
+
+  (_The delightful feeling that they have been cleverer than they
+  thought comes over them and they applaud themselves._)
+
+PETER (_holding up a button that is attached to her chain_). See, the
+arrow struck against this. It is a kiss I gave her; it has saved her
+life.
+
+SLIGHTLY. I remember kisses; let me see it. (_He takes it in his
+hand._) Ay, that is a kiss.
+
+PETER. Wendy, get better quickly and I’ll take you to see the mermaids.
+She is awfully anxious to see a mermaid.
+
+  (TINKER BELL, _who may have been off visiting her relations, returns
+  to the wood and, under the impression that_ WENDY _has been got rid
+  of, is whistling as gaily as a canary. She is not wholly heartless,
+  but is so small that she has only room for one feeling at a time._)
+
+CURLY. Listen to Tink rejoicing because she thinks the Wendy is dead!
+(_Regardless of spoiling another’s pleasure_) Tink, the Wendy lives.
+
+  (TINK _gives expression to fury._)
+
+SECOND TWIN (_tell-tale_). It was she who said that you wanted us to
+shoot the Wendy.
+
+PETER. She said that? Then listen, Tink, I am your friend no more.
+(_There is a note of acerbity in_ TINK’S _reply; it may mean ‘Who wants
+you?’_) Begone from me for ever. (_Now it is a very wet tinkle._)
+
+CURLY. She is crying.
+
+TOOTLES. She says she is your fairy.
+
+PETER (_who knows they are not worth worrying about_). Oh well, not
+for ever, but for a whole week.
+
+  (TINK _goes off sulking, no doubt with the intention of giving all
+  her friends an entirely false impression of_ WENDY’S _appearance_.)
+
+Now what shall we do with Wendy?
+
+CURLY. Let us carry her down into the house.
+
+SLIGHTLY. Ay, that is what one does with ladies.
+
+PETER. No, you must not touch her; it wouldn’t be sufficiently
+respectful.
+
+SLIGHTLY. That is what I was thinking.
+
+TOOTLES. But if she lies there she will die.
+
+SLIGHTLY. Ay, she will die. It is a pity, but there is no way out.
+
+PETER. Yes, there is. Let us build a house around her! (_Cheers again,
+meaning that no difficulty baffles_ PETER.) Leave all to me. Bring the
+best of what we have. Gut our house. Be sharp. (_They race down their
+trees._)
+
+  (_While_ PETER _is engrossed in measuring_ WENDY _so that the house
+  may fit her_, JOHN _and_ MICHAEL, _who have probably landed on the
+  island with a bump, wander forward, so draggled and tired that if you
+  were to ask_ MICHAEL _whether he is awake or asleep he would probably
+  answer ‘I haven’t tried yet.’_)
+
+MICHAEL (_bewildered_). John, John, wake up. Where is Nana, John?
+
+JOHN (_with the help of one eye but not always the same eye_). It is
+true, we did fly! (_Thankfully_) And here is Peter. Peter, is this the
+place?
+
+  (PETER, _alas, has already forgotten them, as soon maybe he will
+  forget_ WENDY. _The first thing she should do now that she is here is
+  to sew a handkerchief for him, and knot it as a jog to his memory._)
+
+PETER (_curtly_). Yes.
+
+MICHAEL. Where is Wendy? (PETER _points_.)
+
+JOHN (_who still wears his hat_). She is asleep.
+
+MICHAEL. John, let us wake her and get her to make supper for us.
+
+  (_Some of the boys emerge, and he pinches one._)
+
+John, look at them!
+
+PETER (_still house-building_). Curly, see that these boys help in the
+building of the house.
+
+JOHN. Build a house?
+
+CURLY. For the Wendy.
+
+JOHN (_feeling that there must be some mistake here_). For Wendy? Why,
+she is only a girl.
+
+CURLY. That is why we are her servants.
+
+JOHN (_dazed_). Are you Wendy’s servants?
+
+PETER. Yes, and you also. Away with them. (_In another moment they are
+woodsmen hacking at trees, with_ CURLY _as overseer_.) Slightly, fetch
+a doctor. (SLIGHTLY _reels and goes. He returns professionally in_
+JOHN’S _hat_.) Please, sir, are you a doctor?
+
+SLIGHTLY (_trembling in his desire to give satisfaction_). Yes, my
+little man.
+
+PETER. Please, sir, a lady lies very ill.
+
+SLIGHTLY (_taking care not to fall over her_). Tut, tut, where does she
+lie?
+
+PETER. In yonder glade. (_It is a variation of a game they play._)
+
+SLIGHTLY. I will put a glass thing in her mouth. (_He inserts an
+imaginary thermometer in_ WENDY’S _mouth and gives it a moment to
+record its verdict. He shakes it and then consults it._)
+
+PETER (_anxiously_). How is she?
+
+SLIGHTLY. Tut, tut, this has cured her.
+
+PETER (_leaping joyously_). I am glad.
+
+SLIGHTLY. I will call again in the evening. Give her beef tea out of a
+cup with a spout to it, tut, tut.
+
+  (_The boys are running up with odd articles of furniture._)
+
+PETER (_with an already fading recollection of the Darling nursery_).
+These are not good enough for Wendy. How I wish I knew the kind of
+house she would prefer!
+
+FIRST TWIN. Peter, she is moving in her sleep.
+
+TOOTLES (_opening_ WENDY’S _mouth and gazing down into the depths_).
+Lovely!
+
+PETER. Oh, Wendy, if you could sing the kind of house you would like to
+have.
+
+  (_It is as if she had heard him._)
+
+WENDY (_without opening her eyes_).
+
+    I wish I had a woodland house,
+    The littlest ever seen,
+    With funny little red walls
+    And roof of mossy green.
+
+  (_In the time she sings this and two other verses, such is the
+  urgency of_ PETER’S _silent orders that they have knocked down
+  trees, laid a foundation and put up the walls and roof, so that she
+  is now hidden from view. ‘Windows,’ cries_ PETER, _and_ CURLY _rushes
+  them in, ‘Roses,’ and_ TOOTLES _arrives breathless with a festoon for
+  the door. Thus springs into existence the most delicious little house
+  for beginners._)
+
+FIRST TWIN. I think it is finished.
+
+PETER. There is no knocker on the door. (TOOTLES _hangs up the sole of
+his shoe_.) There is no chimney; we must have a chimney. (_They await
+his deliberations anxiously._)
+
+JOHN (_unwisely critical_). It certainly does need a chimney.
+
+  (_He is again wearing his hat, which_ PETER _seizes, knocks the top
+  off it and places on the roof. In the friendliest way smoke begins to
+  come out of the hat._)
+
+PETER (_with his hand on the knocker_). All look your best; the first
+impression is awfully important. (_He knocks, and after a dreadful
+moment of suspense, in which they cannot help wondering if any one is
+inside, the door opens and who should come out but_ WENDY! _She has
+evidently been tidying a little. She is quite surprised to find that
+she has nine children._)
+
+WENDY (_genteelly_). Where am I?
+
+SLIGHTLY. Wendy lady, for you we built this house.
+
+NIBS and TOOTLES. Oh, say you are pleased.
+
+WENDY (_stroking the pretty thing_). Lovely, darling house!
+
+FIRST TWIN. And we are your children.
+
+WENDY (_affecting surprise_). Oh?
+
+OMNES (_kneeling, with outstretched arms_). Wendy lady, be our mother!
+(_Now that they know it is pretend they acclaim her greedily._)
+
+WENDY (_not to make herself too cheap_). Ought I? Of course it is
+frightfully fascinating; but you see I am only a little girl; I have no
+real experience.
+
+OMNES. That doesn’t matter. What we need is just a nice motherly person.
+
+WENDY. Oh dear, I feel that is just exactly what I am.
+
+OMNES. It is, it is, we saw it at once.
+
+WENDY. Very well then, I will do my best. (_In their glee they go
+dancing obstreperously round the little house, and she sees she must
+be firm with them as well as kind._) Come inside at once, you naughty
+children, I am sure your feet are damp. And before I put you to bed I
+have just time to finish the story of Cinderella.
+
+  (_They all troop into the enchanting house, whose not least
+  remarkable feature is that it holds them. A vision of_ LIZA _passes,
+  not perhaps because she has any right to be there; but she has so few
+  pleasures and is so young that we just let her have a peep at the
+  little house. By and by_ PETER _comes out and marches up and down
+  with drawn sword, for the pirates can be heard carousing far away
+  on the lagoon, and the wolves are on the prowl. The little house,
+  its walls so red and its roof so mossy, looks very cosy and safe,
+  with a bright light showing through the blind, the chimney smoking
+  beautifully, and_ PETER _on guard. On our last sight of him it is so
+  dark that we just guess he is the little figure who has fallen asleep
+  by the door. Dots of light come and go. They are inquisitive fairies
+  having a look at the house. Any other child in their way they would
+  mischief, but they just tweak_ PETER’S _nose and pass on. Fairies,
+  you see, can touch him._)
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON
+
+
+_It is the end of a long playful day on the lagoon. The sun’s rays have
+persuaded him to give them another five minutes, for one more race over
+the waters before he gathers them up and lets in the moon. There are
+many mermaids here, going plop-plop, and one might attempt to count the
+tails did they not flash and disappear so quickly. At times a lovely
+girl leaps in the air seeking to get rid of her excess of scales, which
+fall in a silver shower as she shakes them off. From the coral grottoes
+beneath the lagoon, where are the mermaids’ bedchambers, comes fitful
+music._
+
+_One of the most bewitching of these blue-eyed creatures is lying
+lazily on Marooners’ Rock, combing her long tresses and noting effects
+in a transparent shell. Peter and his band are in the water unseen
+behind the rock, whither they have tracked her as if she were a trout,
+and at a signal ten pairs of arms come whack upon the mermaid to
+enclose her. Alas, this is only what was meant to happen, for she
+hears the signal (which is the crow of a cock) and slips through their
+arms into the water. It has been such a near thing that there are
+scales on some of their hands. They climb on to the rock crestfallen._
+
+WENDY (_preserving her scales as carefully as if they were rare postage
+stamps_). I did so want to catch a mermaid.
+
+PETER (_getting rid of his_). It is awfully difficult to catch a
+mermaid.
+
+  (_The mermaids at times find it just as difficult to catch him,
+  though he sometimes joins them in their one game, which consists in
+  lazily blowing their bubbles into the air and seeing who can catch
+  them. The number of bubbles_ PETER _has flown away with! When the
+  weather grows cold mermaids migrate to the other side of the world,
+  and he once went with a great shoal of them half the way._)
+
+They are such cruel creatures, Wendy, that they try to pull boys and
+girls like you into the water and drown them.
+
+WENDY (_too guarded by this time to ask what he means precisely by
+‘like you,’ though she is very desirous of knowing_). How hateful!
+
+  (_She is slightly different in appearance now, rather rounder, while_
+  JOHN _and_ MICHAEL _are not quite so round. The reason is that when
+  new lost children arrive at his underground home_ PETER _finds new
+  trees for them to go up and down by, and instead of fitting the tree
+  to them he makes them fit the tree. Sometimes it can be done by
+  adding or removing garments, but if you are bumpy, or the tree is an
+  odd shape, he has things done to you with a roller, and after that
+  you fit._
+
+  _The other boys are now playing King of the Castle, throwing each
+  other into the water, taking headers and so on; but these two
+  continue to talk._)
+
+PETER. Wendy, this is a fearfully important rock. It is called
+Marooners’ Rock. Sailors are marooned, you know, when their captain
+leaves them on a rock and sails away.
+
+WENDY. Leaves them on this little rock to drown?
+
+PETER (_lightly_). Oh, they don’t live long. Their hands are tied, so
+that they can’t swim. When the tide is full this rock is covered with
+water, and then the sailor drowns.
+
+  (WENDY _is uneasy as she surveys the rock, which is the only one in
+  the lagoon and no larger than a table. Since she last looked around a
+  threatening change has come over the scene. The sun has gone, but the
+  moon has not come. What has come is a cold shiver across the waters
+  which has sent all the wiser mermaids to their coral recesses. They
+  know that evil is creeping over the lagoon. Of the boys_ PETER _is of
+  course the first to scent it, and he has leapt to his feet before the
+  words strike the rock--_
+
+      ‘And if we’re parted by a shot
+      We’re sure to meet below.’
+
+  _The games on the rock and around it end so abruptly that several
+  divers are checked in the air. There they hang waiting for the word
+  of command from_ PETER. _When they get it they strike the water
+  simultaneously, and the rock is at once as bare as if suddenly they
+  had been blown off it. Thus the pirates find it deserted when their
+  dinghy strikes the rock and is nearly stove in by the concussion._)
+
+SMEE. Luff, you spalpeen, luff! (_They are_ SMEE _and_ STARKEY, _with_
+TIGER LILY, _their captive, bound hand and foot_.) What we have got to
+do is to hoist the redskin on to the rock and leave her there to drown.
+
+  (_To one of her race this is an end darker than death by fire or
+  torture, for it is written in the laws of the Piccaninnies that there
+  is no path through water to the happy hunting ground. Yet her face is
+  impassive; she is the daughter of a chief and must die as a chief’s
+  daughter; it is enough._)
+
+STARKEY (_chagrined because she does not mewl_). No mewling. This is
+your reward for prowling round the ship with a knife in your mouth.
+
+TIGER LILY (_stoically_). Enough said.
+
+SMEE (_who would have preferred a farewell palaver_). So that’s it! On
+to the rock with her, mate.
+
+STARKEY (_experiencing for perhaps the last time the stirrings of a
+man_). Not so rough, Smee; roughish, but not so rough.
+
+SMEE (_dragging her on to the rock_). It is the captain’s orders.
+
+  (_A stave has in some past time been driven into the rock, probably
+  to mark the burial place of hidden treasure, and to this they moor
+  the dinghy._)
+
+WENDY (_in the water_). Poor Tiger Lily!
+
+STARKEY. What was that? (_The children bob._)
+
+PETER (_who can imitate the captain’s voice so perfectly that even the
+author has a dizzy feeling that at times he was really_ HOOK). Ahoy
+there, you lubbers!
+
+STARKEY. It is the captain; he must be swimming out to us.
+
+SMEE (_calling_). We have put the redskin on the rock, Captain.
+
+PETER. Set her free.
+
+SMEE. But, Captain----
+
+PETER. Cut her bonds, or I’ll plunge my hook in you.
+
+SMEE. This is queer!
+
+STARKEY (_unmanned_). Let us follow the captain’s orders.
+
+  (_They undo the thongs and_ TIGER LILY _slides between their legs
+  into the lagoon, forgetting in her haste to utter her war-cry, but_
+  PETER _utters it for her, so naturally that even the lost boys are
+  deceived. It is at this moment that the voice of the true_ HOOK _is
+  heard_.)
+
+HOOK. Boat ahoy!
+
+SMEE (_relieved_). It is the captain.
+
+  (HOOK _is swimming, and they help him to scale the rock. He is in
+  gloomy mood._)
+
+STARKEY. Captain, is all well?
+
+SMEE. He sighs.
+
+STARKEY. He sighs again.
+
+SMEE (_counting_). And yet a third time he sighs. (_With foreboding_)
+What’s up, Captain?
+
+HOOK (_who has perhaps found the large rich damp cake untouched_). The
+game is up. Those boys have found a mother!
+
+STARKEY. Oh evil day!
+
+SMEE. What is a mother?
+
+WENDY (_horrified_). He doesn’t know!
+
+HOOK (_sharply_). What was that?
+
+  (PETER _makes the splash of a mermaid’s tail_.)
+
+STARKEY. One of them mermaids.
+
+HOOK. Dost not know, Smee? A mother is--(_he finds it more difficult to
+explain than he had expected, and looks about him for an illustration.
+He finds one in a great bird which drifts past in a nest as large as
+the roomiest basin._) There is a lesson in mothers for you! The nest
+must have fallen into the water, but would the bird desert her eggs?
+(PETER, _who is now more or less off his head, makes the sound of a
+bird answering in the negative. The nest is borne out of sight._)
+
+STARKEY. Maybe she is hanging about here to protect Peter?
+
+  (HOOK’S _face clouds still further and_ PETER _just manages not to
+  call out that he needs no protection_.)
+
+SMEE (_not usually a man of ideas_). Captain, could we not kidnap these
+boys’ mother and make her our mother?
+
+HOOK. Obesity and bunions, ’tis a princely scheme. We will seize the
+children, make them walk the plank, and Wendy shall be our mother!
+
+WENDY. Never! (_Another splash from_ PETER.)
+
+HOOK. What say you, bullies?
+
+SMEE. There is my hand on ’t.
+
+STARKEY. And mine.
+
+HOOK. And there is my hook. Swear. (_All swear._) But I had forgot;
+where is the redskin?
+
+SMEE (_shaken_). That is all right, Captain; we let her go.
+
+HOOK (_terrible_). Let her go?
+
+SMEE. ’Twas your own orders, Captain.
+
+STARKEY (_whimpering_). You called over the water to us to let her go.
+
+HOOK. Brimstone and gall, what cozening is here? (_Disturbed by their
+faithful faces_) Lads, I gave no such order.
+
+SMEE. ’Tis passing queer.
+
+HOOK (_addressing the immensities_). Spirit that haunts this dark
+lagoon to-night, dost hear me?
+
+PETER (_in the same voice_). Odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I hear you.
+
+HOOK (_gripping the stave for support_). Who are you, stranger, speak.
+
+PETER (_who is only too ready to speak_). I am Jas Hook, Captain of the
+_Jolly Roger_.
+
+HOOK (_now white to the gills_). No, no, you are not.
+
+PETER. Brimstone and gall, say that again and I’ll cast anchor in you.
+
+HOOK. If you are Hook, come tell me, who am I?
+
+PETER. A codfish, only a codfish.
+
+HOOK (_aghast_). A codfish?
+
+SMEE (_drawing back from him_). Have we been captained all this time by
+a codfish?
+
+STARKEY. It’s lowering to our pride.
+
+HOOK (_feeling that his ego is slipping from him_). Don’t desert me,
+bullies.
+
+PETER (_top-heavy_). Paw, fish, paw!
+
+  (_There is a touch of the feminine in_ HOOK, _as in all the greatest
+  pirates, and it prompts him to try the guessing game_.)
+
+HOOK. Have you another name?
+
+PETER (_falling to the lure_). Ay, ay.
+
+HOOK (_thirstily_). Vegetable?
+
+PETER. No.
+
+HOOK. Mineral?
+
+PETER. No.
+
+HOOK. Animal?
+
+PETER (_after a hurried consultation with_ TOOTLES). Yes.
+
+HOOK. Man?
+
+PETER (_with scorn_). No.
+
+HOOK. Boy?
+
+PETER. Yes.
+
+HOOK. Ordinary boy?
+
+PETER. No!
+
+HOOK. Wonderful boy?
+
+PETER (_to_ WENDY’S _distress_). Yes!
+
+HOOK. Are you in England?
+
+PETER. No.
+
+HOOK. Are you here?
+
+PETER. Yes.
+
+HOOK (_beaten, though he feels he has very nearly got it_). Smee, you
+ask him some questions.
+
+SMEE (_rummaging his brains_). I can’t think of a thing.
+
+PETER. Can’t guess, can’t guess! (_Foundering in his cockiness_) Do you
+give it up?
+
+HOOK (_eagerly_). Yes.
+
+PETER. All of you?
+
+SMEE and STARKEY. Yes.
+
+PETER (_crowing_). Well, then, I am Peter Pan!
+
+  (_Now they have him._)
+
+HOOK. Pan! Into the water, Smee. Starkey, mind the boat. Take him dead
+or alive!
+
+PETER (_who still has all his baby teeth_). Boys, lam into the pirates!
+
+  (_For a moment the only two we can see are in the dinghy, where_
+  JOHN _throws himself on_ STARKEY. STARKEY _wriggles into the lagoon
+  and_ JOHN _leaps so quickly after him that he reaches it first. The
+  impression left on_ STARKEY _is that he is being attacked by the_
+  TWINS. _The water becomes stained. The dinghy drifts away. Here
+  and there a head shows in the water, and once it is the head of
+  the crocodile. In the growing gloom some strike at their friends_,
+  SLIGHTLY _getting_ TOOTLES _in the fourth rib while he himself is
+  pinked by_ CURLY. _It looks as if the boys were getting the worse of
+  it, which is perhaps just as well at this point, because_ PETER, _who
+  will be the determining factor in the end, has a perplexing way of
+  changing sides if he is winning too easily_. HOOK’S _iron claw makes
+  a circle of black water round him from which opponents flee like
+  fishes. There is only one prepared to enter that dreadful circle. His
+  name is_ PAN. _Strangely, it is not in the water that they meet._
+  HOOK _has risen to the rock to breathe, and at the same moment_ PETER
+  _scales it on the opposite side. The rock is now wet and as slippery
+  as a ball, and they have to crawl rather than climb. Suddenly they
+  are face to face._ PETER _gnashes his pretty teeth with joy, and is
+  gathering himself for the spring when he sees he is higher up the
+  rock than his foe. Courteously he waits_; HOOK _sees his intention,
+  and taking advantage of it claws twice_. PETER _is untouched, but
+  unfairness is what he never can get used to, and in his bewilderment
+  he rolls off the rock. The crocodile, whose tick has been drowned
+  in the strife, rears its jaws, and_ HOOK, _who has almost stepped
+  into them, is pursued by it to land. All is quiet on the lagoon now,
+  not a sound save little waves nibbling at the rock, which is smaller
+  than when we last looked at it. Two boys appear with the dinghy, and
+  the others despite their wounds climb into it. They send the cry
+  ‘Peter--Wendy’ across the waters, but no answer comes._)
+
+NIBS. They must be swimming home.
+
+JOHN. Or flying.
+
+FIRST TWIN. Yes, that is it. Let us be off and call to them as we go.
+
+  (_The dinghy disappears with its load, whose hearts would sink it if
+  they knew of the peril of_ WENDY _and her captain. From near and far
+  away come the cries ‘Peter--Wendy’ till we no longer hear them._
+
+  _Two small figures are now on the rock, but they have fainted. A
+  mermaid who has dared to come back in the stillness stretches up her
+  arms and is slowly pulling_ WENDY _into the water to drown her_.
+  WENDY _starts up just in time_.)
+
+WENDY. Peter!
+
+  (_He rouses himself and looks around him._)
+
+Where are we, Peter?
+
+PETER. We are on the rock, but it is getting smaller. Soon the water
+will be over it. Listen!
+
+  (_They can hear the wash of the relentless little waves._)
+
+WENDY. We must go.
+
+PETER. Yes.
+
+WENDY. Shall we swim or fly?
+
+PETER. Wendy, do you think you could swim or fly to the island without
+me?
+
+WENDY. You know I couldn’t, Peter; I am just a beginner.
+
+PETER. Hook wounded me twice. (_He believes it; he is so good at
+pretend that he feels the pain, his arms hang limp._) I can neither
+swim nor fly.
+
+WENDY. Do you mean we shall both be drowned?
+
+PETER. Look how the water is rising!
+
+  (_They cover their faces with their hands. Something touches_ WENDY
+  _as lightly as a kiss_.)
+
+PETER (_with little interest_). It must be the tail of the kite we made
+for Michael; you remember it tore itself out of his hands and floated
+away. (_He looks up and sees the kite sailing overhead._) The kite! Why
+shouldn’t it carry you? (_He grips the tail and pulls, and the kite
+responds._)
+
+WENDY. Both of us!
+
+PETER. It can’t lift two. Michael and Curly tried.
+
+  (_She knows very well that if it can lift her it can lift him also,
+  for she has been told by the boys as a deadly secret that one of the
+  queer things about him is that he is no weight at all. But it is a
+  forbidden subject._)
+
+WENDY. I won’t go without you. Let us draw lots which is to stay behind.
+
+PETER. And you a lady, never! (_The tail is in her hands, and the kite
+is tugging hard. She holds out her mouth to_ PETER, _but he knows they
+cannot do that_.) Ready, Wendy!
+
+  (_The kite draws her out of sight across the lagoon._
+
+  _The waters are lapping over the rock now, and_ PETER _knows that it
+  will soon be submerged. Pale rays of light mingle with the moving
+  clouds, and from the coral grottoes is to be heard a sound, at once
+  the most musical and the most melancholy in the Never Land, the
+  mermaids calling to the moon to rise._ PETER _is afraid at last, and
+  a tremor runs through him, like a shudder passing over the lagoon;
+  but on the lagoon one shudder follows another till there are hundreds
+  of them, and he feels just the one._)
+
+PETER (_with a drum beating in his breast as if he were a real boy at
+last_). To die will be an awfully big adventure.
+
+  (_The blind rises again, and the lagoon is now suffused with
+  moonlight. He is on the rock still, but the water is over his feet.
+  The nest is borne nearer, and the bird, after cooing a message to
+  him, leaves it and wings her way upwards._ PETER, _who knows the
+  bird language, slips into the nest, first removing the two eggs and
+  placing them in_ STARKEY’S _hat, which has been left on the stave.
+  The hat drifts away from the rock, but he uses the stave as a
+  mast. The wind is driving him toward the open sea. He takes off his
+  shirt, which he had forgotten to remove while bathing, and unfurls
+  it as a sail. His vessel tacks, and he passes from sight, naked and
+  victorious. The bird returns and sits on the hat._)
+
+
+
+
+ACT IV
+
+
+
+
+ACT IV
+
+THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
+
+
+_We see simultaneously the home under the ground with the children
+in it and the wood above ground with the redskins on it. Below, the
+children are gobbling their evening meal; above, the redskins are
+squatting in their blankets near the little house guarding the children
+from the pirates. The only way of communicating between these two
+parties is by means of the hollow trees._
+
+_The home has an earthen floor, which is handy for digging in if you
+want to go fishing; and owing to there being so many entrances there is
+not much wall space. The table at which the lost ones are sitting is a
+board on top of a live tree trunk, which has been cut flat but has such
+growing pains that the board rises as they eat, and they have sometimes
+to pause in their meals to cut a bit more off the trunk. Their seats
+are pumpkins or the large gay mushrooms of which we have seen an
+imitation one concealing the chimney. There is an enormous fireplace
+which is in almost any part of the room where you care to light it, and
+across this Wendy has stretched strings, made of fibre, from which she
+hangs her washing. There are also various tomfool things in the room of
+no use whatever._
+
+_Michael’s basket bed is nailed high up on the wall as if to protect
+him from the cat, but there is no indication at present of where
+the others sleep. At the back between two of the tree trunks is a
+grindstone, and near it is a lovely hole, the size of a band-box, with
+a gay curtain drawn across so that you cannot see what is inside. This
+is Tink’s withdrawing-room and bed-chamber, and it is just as well that
+you cannot see inside, for it is so exquisite in its decoration and
+in the personal apparel spread out on the bed that you could scarcely
+resist making off with something. Tink is within at present, as one
+can guess from a glow showing through the chinks. It is her own glow,
+for though she has a chandelier for the look of the thing, of course
+she lights her residence herself. She is probably wasting valuable
+time just now wondering whether to put on the smoky blue or the
+apple-blossom._
+
+_All the boys except Peter are here, and Wendy has the head of the
+table, smiling complacently at their captivating ways, but doing
+her best at the same time to see that they keep the rules about
+hands-off-the-table, no-two-to-speak-at-once, and so on. She is
+wearing romantic woodland garments, sewn by herself, with red berries
+in her hair which go charmingly with her complexion, as she knows;
+indeed she searched for red berries the morning after she reached the
+island. The boys are in picturesque attire of her contrivance, and if
+these don’t always fit well the fault is not hers but the wearers’, for
+they constantly put on each other’s things when they put on anything
+at all. Michael is in his cradle on the wall. First Twin is apart on a
+high stool and wears a dunce’s cap, another invention of Wendy’s, but
+not wholly successful because everybody wants to be dunce._
+
+_It is a pretend meal this evening, with nothing whatever on the table,
+not a mug, nor a crust, nor a spoon. They often have these suppers and
+like them on occasions as well as the other kind, which consist chiefly
+of bread-fruit, tappa rolls, yams, mammee apples and banana splash,
+washed down with calabashes of poe-poe. The pretend meals are not
+Wendy’s idea; indeed she was rather startled to find, on arriving, that
+Peter knew of no other kind, and she is not absolutely certain even now
+that he does eat the other kind, though no one appears to do it more
+heartily. He insists that the pretend meals should be partaken of with
+gusto, and we see his band doing their best to obey orders._
+
+WENDY (_her fingers to her ears, for their chatter and clatter are
+deafening_). Si-lence! Is your mug empty, Slightly?
+
+SLIGHTLY (_who would not say this if he had a mug_). Not quite empty,
+thank you.
+
+NIBS. Mummy, he has not even begun to drink his poe-poe.
+
+SLIGHTLY (_seizing his chance, for this is tale-bearing_). I complain
+of Nibs!
+
+  (JOHN _holds up his hand_.)
+
+WENDY. Well, John?
+
+JOHN. May I sit in Peter’s chair as he is not here?
+
+WENDY. In your father’s chair? Certainly not.
+
+JOHN. He is not really our father. He did not even know how to be a
+father till I showed him.
+
+  (_This is insubordination._)
+
+SECOND TWIN. I complain of John!
+
+  (_The gentle_ TOOTLES _raises his hand_.)
+
+TOOTLES (_who has the poorest opinion of himself_). I don’t suppose
+Michael would let me be baby?
+
+MICHAEL. No, I won’t.
+
+TOOTLES. May I be dunce?
+
+FIRST TWIN (_from his perch_). No. It’s awfully difficult to be dunce.
+
+TOOTLES. As I can’t be anything important would any of you like to see
+me do a trick?
+
+OMNES. No.
+
+TOOTLES (_subsiding_). I hadn’t really any hope.
+
+  (_The tale-telling breaks out again._)
+
+NIBS. Slightly is coughing on the table.
+
+CURLY. The twins began with tappa rolls.
+
+SLIGHTLY. I complain of Nibs!
+
+NIBS. I complain of Slightly!
+
+WENDY. Oh dear, I am sure I sometimes think that spinsters are to be
+envied.
+
+MICHAEL. Wendy, I am too big for a cradle.
+
+WENDY. You are the littlest, and a cradle is such a nice homely thing
+to have about a house. You others can clear away now. (_She sits down
+on a pumpkin near the fire to her usual evening occupation, darning._)
+Every heel with a hole in it!
+
+  (_The boys clear away with dispatch, washing dishes they don’t have
+  in a non-existent sink and stowing them in a cupboard that isn’t
+  there. Instead of sawing the table-leg to-night they crush it into
+  the ground like a concertina, and are now ready for play, in which
+  they indulge hilariously._
+
+  _A movement of the Indians draws our attention to the scene above.
+  Hitherto, with the exception of_ PANTHER, _who sits on guard on top
+  of the little house, they have been hunkering in their blankets,
+  mute but picturesque; now all rise and prostrate themselves before
+  the majestic figure of_ PETER, _who approaches through the forest
+  carrying a gun and game bag. It is not exactly a gun. He often
+  wanders away alone with this weapon, and when he comes back you are
+  never absolutely certain whether he has had an adventure or not. He
+  may have forgotten it so completely that he says nothing about it;
+  and then when you go out you find the body. On the other hand he may
+  say a great deal about it, and yet you never find the body. Sometimes
+  he comes home with his face scratched, and tells_ WENDY, _as a thing
+  of no importance, that he got these marks from the little people for
+  cheeking them at a fairy wedding, and she listens politely, but she
+  is never quite sure, you know; indeed the only one who is sure about
+  anything on the island is_ PETER.)
+
+PETER. The Great White Father is glad to see the Piccaninny braves
+protecting his wigwam from the pirates.
+
+TIGER LILY. The Great White Father save me from pirates. Me his velly
+nice friend now; no let pirates hurt him.
+
+BRAVES. Ugh, ugh, wah!
+
+TIGER LILY. Tiger Lily has spoken.
+
+PANTHER. Loola, loola! Great Big Little Panther has spoken.
+
+PETER. It is well. The Great White Father has spoken.
+
+  (_This has a note of finality about it, with the implied ‘And now
+  shut up,’ which is never far from the courteous receptions of
+  well-meaning inferiors by born leaders of men. He descends his tree,
+  not unheard by_ WENDY.)
+
+WENDY. Children, I hear your father’s step. He likes you to meet him at
+the door. (PETER _scatters pretend nuts among them and watches sharply
+to see that they crunch with relish_.) Peter, you just spoil them, you
+know!
+
+JOHN (_who would be incredulous if he dare_). Any sport, Peter?
+
+PETER. Two tigers and a pirate.
+
+JOHN (_boldly_). Where are their heads?
+
+PETER (_contracting his little brows_). In the bag.
+
+JOHN. (_No, he doesn’t say it. He backs away._)
+
+WENDY (_peeping into the bag_). They are beauties! (_She has learned
+her lesson._)
+
+FIRST TWIN. Mummy, we all want to dance.
+
+WENDY. The mother of such an armful dance!
+
+SLIGHTLY. As it is Saturday night?
+
+  (_They have long lost count of the days, but always if they want to
+  do anything special they say this is Saturday night, and then they do
+  it._)
+
+WENDY. Of course it is Saturday night, Peter? (_He shrugs an
+indifferent assent._) On with your nighties first.
+
+  (_They disappear into various recesses, and_ PETER _and_ WENDY _with
+  her darning are left by the fire to dodder parentally. She emphasises
+  it by humming a verse of ‘John Anderson my Jo,’ which has not the
+  desired effect on_ PETER. _She is too loving to be ignorant that he
+  is not loving enough, and she hesitates like one who knows the answer
+  to her question._)
+
+What is wrong, Peter?
+
+PETER (_scared_). It is only pretend, isn’t it, that I am their father?
+
+WENDY (_drooping_). Oh yes.
+
+  (_His sigh of relief is without consideration for her feelings._)
+
+But they are ours, Peter, yours and mine.
+
+PETER (_determined to get at facts, the only things that puzzle him_).
+But not really?
+
+WENDY. Not if you don’t wish it.
+
+PETER. I don’t.
+
+WENDY (_knowing she ought not to probe but driven to it by something
+within_). What are your exact feelings for me, Peter?
+
+PETER (_in the class-room_). Those of a devoted son, Wendy.
+
+WENDY (_turning away_). I thought so.
+
+PETER. You are so puzzling. Tiger Lily is just the same; there is
+something or other she wants to be to me, but she says it is not my
+mother.
+
+WENDY (_with spirit_). No, indeed it isn’t.
+
+PETER. Then what is it?
+
+WENDY. It isn’t for a lady to tell.
+
+  (_The curtain of the fairy chamber opens slightly, and_ TINK, _who
+  has doubtless been eavesdropping, tinkles a laugh of scorn_.)
+
+PETER (_badgered_). I suppose she means that she wants to be my mother.
+
+  (TINK’S _comment is ‘You silly ass.’_)
+
+WENDY (_who has picked up some of the fairy words_). I almost agree
+with her!
+
+  (_The arrival of the boys in their nightgowns turns_ WENDY’S _mind to
+  practical matters, for the children have to be arranged in line and
+  passed or not passed for cleanliness._ SLIGHTLY _is the worst. At
+  last we see how they sleep, for in a babel the great bed which stands
+  on end by day against the wall is unloosed from custody and lowered
+  to the floor. Though large, it is a tight fit for so many boys, and_
+  WENDY _has made a rule that there is to be no turning round until one
+  gives the signal, when all turn at once_.
+
+  FIRST TWIN _is the best dancer and performs mightily on the bed and
+  in it and out of it and over it to an accompaniment of pillow fights
+  by the less agile; and then there is a rush at_ WENDY.)
+
+NIBS. Now the story you promised to tell us as soon as we were in bed!
+
+WENDY (_severely_). As far as I can see you are not in bed yet.
+
+  (_They scramble into the bed, and the effect is as of a boxful of
+  sardines._)
+
+WENDY (_drawing up her stool_). Well, there was once a gentleman----
+
+CURLY. I wish he had been a lady.
+
+NIBS. I wish he had been a white rat.
+
+WENDY. Quiet! There was a lady also. The gentleman’s name was Mr.
+Darling and the lady’s name was Mrs. Darling----
+
+JOHN. I knew them!
+
+MICHAEL (_who has been allowed to join the circle_). I think I knew
+them.
+
+WENDY. They were married, you know; and what do you think they had?
+
+NIBS. White rats?
+
+WENDY. No, they had three descendants. White rats are descendants also.
+Almost everything is a descendant. Now these three children had a
+faithful nurse called Nana.
+
+MICHAEL (_alas_). What a funny name!
+
+WENDY. But Mr. Darling--(_faltering_) or was it Mrs. Darling?--was
+angry with her and chained her up in the yard; so all the children flew
+away. They flew away to the Never Land, where the lost boys are.
+
+CURLY. I just thought they did; I don’t know how it is, but I just
+thought they did.
+
+TOOTLES. Oh, Wendy, was one of the lost boys called Tootles?
+
+WENDY. Yes, he was.
+
+TOOTLES (_dazzled_). Am I in a story? Nibs, I am in a story!
+
+PETER (_who is by the fire making Pan’s pipes with his knife, and is
+determined that_ WENDY _shall have fair play, however beastly a story
+he may think it_). A little less noise there.
+
+WENDY (_melting over the beauty of her present performance, but without
+any real qualms_). Now I want you to consider the feelings of the
+unhappy parents with all their children flown away. Think, oh think, of
+the empty beds. (_The heartless ones think of them with glee._)
+
+FIRST TWIN (_cheerfully_). It’s awfully sad.
+
+WENDY. But our heroine knew that her mother would always leave the
+window open for her progeny to fly back by; so they stayed away for
+years and had a lovely time.
+
+  (PETER _is interested at last_.)
+
+FIRST TWIN. Did they ever go back?
+
+WENDY (_comfortably_). Let us now take a peep into the future. Years
+have rolled by, and who is this elegant lady of uncertain age alighting
+at London station?
+
+  (_The tension is unbearable._)
+
+NIBS. Oh, Wendy, who is she?
+
+WENDY (_swelling_). Can it be--yes--no--yes, it is the fair Wendy!
+
+TOOTLES. I am glad.
+
+WENDY. Who are the two noble portly figures accompanying her? Can
+they be John and Michael? They are. (_Pride of_ MICHAEL.) ‘See, dear
+brothers,’ says Wendy, pointing upward, ‘there is the window standing
+open.’ So up they flew to their loving parents, and pen cannot inscribe
+the happy scene over which we draw a veil. (_Her triumph is spoilt
+by a groan from_ PETER _and she hurries to him_.) Peter, what is it?
+(_Thinking he is ill, and looking lower than his chest._) Where is it?
+
+PETER. It isn’t that kind of pain. Wendy, you are wrong about mothers.
+I thought like you about the window, so I stayed away for moons and
+moons, and then I flew back, but the window was barred, for my mother
+had forgotten all about me and there was another little boy sleeping in
+my bed.
+
+  (_This is a general damper._)
+
+JOHN. Wendy, let us go back!
+
+WENDY. Are you sure mothers are like that?
+
+PETER. Yes.
+
+WENDY. John, Michael! (_She clasps them to her._)
+
+FIRST TWIN (_alarmed_). You are not to leave us, Wendy?
+
+WENDY. I must.
+
+NIBS. Not to-night?
+
+WENDY. At once. Perhaps mother is in half-mourning by this time! Peter,
+will you make the necessary arrangements?
+
+  (_She asks it in the steely tones women adopt when they are prepared
+  secretly for opposition._)
+
+PETER (_coolly_). If you wish it.
+
+  (_He ascends his tree to give the redskins their instructions. The
+  lost boys gather threateningly round_ WENDY.)
+
+CURLY. We won’t let you go!
+
+WENDY (_with one of those inspirations women have, in an emergency, to
+make use of some male who need otherwise have no hope_). Tootles, I
+appeal to you.
+
+TOOTLES (_leaping to his death if necessary_). I am just Tootles and
+nobody minds me, but the first who does not behave to Wendy I will
+blood him severely. (PETER _returns_.)
+
+PETER (_with awful serenity_). Wendy, I told the braves to guide you
+through the wood as flying tires you so. Then Tinker Bell will take you
+across the sea. (_A shrill tinkle from the boudoir probably means ‘and
+drop her into it.’_)
+
+NIBS (_fingering the curtain which he is not allowed to open_). Tink,
+you are to get up and take Wendy on a journey. (_Star-eyed_) She says
+she won’t!
+
+PETER (_taking a step toward that chamber_). If you don’t get up, Tink,
+and dress at once---- She is getting up!
+
+WENDY (_quivering now that the time to depart has come_). Dear ones, if
+you will all come with me I feel almost sure I can get my father and
+mother to adopt you.
+
+  (_There is joy at this, not that they want parents, but novelty is
+  their religion._)
+
+NIBS. But won’t they think us rather a handful?
+
+WENDY (_a swift reckoner_). Oh no, it will only mean having a few
+beds in the drawing-room; they can be hidden behind screens on first
+Thursdays.
+
+  (_Everything depends on_ PETER.)
+
+OMNES. Peter, may we go?
+
+PETER (_carelessly through the pipes to which he is giving a finishing
+touch_). All right.
+
+  (_They scurry off to dress for the adventure_.)
+
+WENDY (_insinuatingly_). Get your clothes, Peter.
+
+PETER (_skipping about and playing fairy music on his pipes, the only
+music he knows_). I am not going with you, Wendy.
+
+WENDY. Yes, Peter!
+
+PETER. No.
+
+  (_The lost ones run back gaily, each carrying a stick with a bundle
+  on the end of it._)
+
+WENDY. Peter isn’t coming!
+
+(_All the faces go blank._)
+
+JOHN (_even_ JOHN). Peter not coming!
+
+TOOTLES (_overthrown_). Why, Peter?
+
+PETER (_his pipes more riotous than ever_). I just want always to be a
+little boy and to have fun.
+
+  (_There is a general fear that they are perhaps making the mistake of
+  their lives._)
+
+Now then, no fuss, no blubbering. (_With dreadful cynicism_) I hope you
+will like your mothers! Are you ready, Tink? Then lead the way.
+
+  (TINK _darts up any tree, but she is the only one. The air above is
+  suddenly rent with shrieks and the clash of steel. Though they cannot
+  see, the boys know that_ HOOK _and his crew are upon the Indians.
+  Mouths open and remain open, all in mute appeal to_ PETER. _He is
+  the only boy on his feet now, a sword in his hand, the same he slew
+  Barbicue with; and in his eye is the lust of battle._
+
+  _We can watch the carnage that is invisible to the children._ HOOK
+  _has basely broken the two laws of Indian warfare, which are that
+  the redskins should attack first, and that it should be at dawn.
+  They have known the pirate whereabouts since, early in the night,
+  one of_ SMEE’S _fingers crackled. The brushwood has closed behind
+  their scouts as silently as the sand on the mole; for hours they
+  have imitated the lonely call of the coyote; no stratagem has been
+  overlooked, but, alas, they have trusted to the pale-faces’ honour
+  to await an attack at dawn, when his courage is known to be at
+  the lowest ebb._ HOOK _falls upon them pell-mell, and one cannot
+  withhold a reluctant admiration for the wit that conceived so subtle
+  a scheme and the fell genius with which it is carried out. If the
+  braves would rise quickly they might still have time to scalp, but
+  this they are forbidden to do by the traditions of their race, for
+  it is written that they must never express surprise in the presence
+  of the pale-face. For a brief space they remain recumbent, not a
+  muscle moving, as if the foe were here by invitation. Thus perish
+  the flower of the Piccaninnies, though not unavenged, for with_ LEAN
+  WOLF _fall_ ALF MASON _and_ CANARY ROBB, _while other pirates to bite
+  dust are_ BLACK GILMOUR _and_ ALAN HERB, _that same_ HERB _who is
+  still remembered at Manaos for playing skittles with the mate of the_
+  Switch _for each other’s heads_. CHAY TURLEY, _who laughed with the
+  wrong side of his mouth (having no other), is tomahawked by_ PANTHER,
+  _who eventually cuts a way through the shambles with_ TIGER LILY _and
+  a remnant of the tribe_.
+
+  _This onslaught passes and is gone like a fierce wind. The victors
+  wipe their cutlasses, and squint, ferret-eyed, at their leader. He
+  remains, as ever, aloof in spirit and in substance. He signs to them
+  to descend the trees, for he is convinced that_ PAN _is down there,
+  and though he has smoked the bees it is the honey he wants. There is
+  something in_ PETER _that at all times goads this extra-ordinary man
+  to frenzy; it is the boy’s cockiness, which disturbs_ HOOK _like an
+  insect. If you have seen a lion in a cage futilely pursuing a sparrow
+  you will know what is meant. The pirates try to do their captain’s
+  bidding, but the apertures prove to be not wide enough for them; he
+  cannot even ram them down with a pole. He steals to the mouth of a
+  tree and listens._)
+
+PETER (_prematurely_). All is over!
+
+WENDY. But who has won?
+
+PETER. Hst! If the Indians have won they will beat the tom-tom; it is
+always their signal of victory.
+
+  (HOOK _licks his lips at this and signs to_ SMEE, _who is sitting
+  on it, to hold up the tom-tom. He beats upon it with his claw, and
+  listens for results._)
+
+TOOTLES. The tom-tom!
+
+PETER (_sheathing his sword_). An Indian victory!
+
+  (_The cheers from below are music to the black hearts above._)
+
+You are quite safe now, Wendy. Boys, good-bye. (_He resumes his pipes._)
+
+WENDY. Peter, you will remember about changing your flannels, won’t you?
+
+PETER. Oh, all right!
+
+WENDY. And this is your medicine.
+
+  (_She puts something into a shell and leaves it on a ledge between
+  two of the trees. It is only water, but she measures it out in
+  drops._)
+
+PETER. I won’t forget.
+
+WENDY. Peter, what are you to me?
+
+PETER (_through the pipes_). Your son, Wendy.
+
+WENDY. Oh, good-bye!
+
+  (_The travellers start upon their journey, little witting that_ HOOK
+  _has issued his silent orders: a man to the mouth of each tree, and
+  a row of men between the trees and the little house. As the children
+  squeeze up they are plucked from their trees, trussed, thrown like
+  bales of cotton from one pirate to another, and so piled up in the
+  little house. The only one treated differently is_ WENDY, _whom_ HOOK
+  _escorts to the house on his arm with hateful politeness. He signs to
+  his dogs to be gone, and they depart through the wood, carrying the
+  little house with its strange merchandise and singing their ribald
+  song. The chimney of the little house emits a jet of smoke fitfully,
+  as if not sure what it ought to do just now._
+
+  HOOK _and_ PETER _are now, as it were, alone on the island. Below_,
+  PETER _is on the bed, asleep, no weapon near him; above_, HOOK,
+  _armed to the teeth, is searching noiselessly for some tree down
+  which the nastiness of him can descend. Don’t be too much alarmed
+  by this; it is precisely the situation_ _PETER_ _would have chosen;
+  indeed if the whole thing were pretend--. One of his arms droops over
+  the edge of the bed, a leg is arched, and the mouth is not so tightly
+  closed that we cannot see the little pearls. He is dreaming, and in
+  his dreams he is always in pursuit of a boy who was never here, nor
+  anywhere: the only boy who could beat him._
+
+  HOOK _finds the tree. It is the one set apart for_ SLIGHTLY, _who
+  being addicted when hot to the drinking of water has swelled in
+  consequence and surreptitiously scooped his tree for easier descent
+  and egress. Down this the pirate wriggles a passage. In the aperture
+  below his face emerges and goes green as he glares at the sleeping
+  child. Does no feeling of compassion disturb his sombre breast? The
+  man is not wholly evil: he has a_ Thesaurus _in his cabin, and is no
+  mean performer on the flute. What really warps him is a presentiment
+  that he is about to fail. This is not unconnected with a beatific
+  smile on the face of the sleeper, whom he cannot reach owing to
+  being stuck at the foot of the tree. He, however, sees the medicine
+  shell within easy reach, and to_ WENDY’S _draught he adds from a
+  bottle five drops of poison distilled when he was weeping from the
+  red in his eye. The expression on_ PETER’S _face merely implies that
+  something heavenly is going on_. HOOK _worms his way upwards, and
+  winding his cloak around him, as if to conceal his person from the
+  night of which he is the blackest part, he stalks moodily toward the
+  lagoon._
+
+  _A dot of light flashes past him and darts down the nearest tree,
+  looking for_ PETER, _only for_ PETER, _quite indifferent about the
+  others when she finds him safe_.)
+
+PETER (_stirring_). Who is that? (TINK _has to tell her tale, in one
+long ungrammatical sentence_.) The redskins were defeated? Wendy and
+the boys captured by the pirates! I’ll rescue her, I’ll rescue her!
+(_He leaps first at his dagger, and then at his grindstone, to sharpen
+it._ TINK _alights near the shell, and rings out a warning cry_.) Oh,
+that is just my medicine. Poisoned? Who could have poisoned it? I
+promised Wendy to take it, and I will as soon as I have sharpened my
+dagger. (TINK, _who sees its red colour and remembers the red in the
+pirate’s eye, nobly swallows the draught as_ PETER’S _hand is reaching
+for it_.) Why, Tink, you have drunk my medicine! (_She flutters
+strangely about the room, answering him now in a very thin tinkle._)
+It was poisoned and you drank it to save my life! Tink, dear Tink, are
+you dying? (_He has never called her dear Tink before, and for a moment
+she is gay; she alights on his shoulder, gives his chin a loving bite,
+whispers ‘You silly ass,’ and falls on her tiny bed. The boudoir, which
+is lit by her, flickers ominously. He is on his knees by the opening._)
+
+Her light is growing faint, and if it goes out, that means she is
+dead! Her voice is so low I can scarcely tell what she is saying.
+She says--she says she thinks she could get well again if children
+believed in fairies! (_He rises and throws out his arms he knows not
+to whom, perhaps to the boys and girls of whom he is not one._) Do you
+believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap
+your hands! (_Many clap, some don’t, a few hiss. Then perhaps there is
+a rush of Nanas to the nurseries to see what on earth is happening.
+But_ TINK _is saved_.) Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! And now to
+rescue Wendy!
+
+  (TINK _is already as merry and impudent as a grig, with not a thought
+  for those who have saved her_. PETER _ascends his tree as if he were
+  shot up it. What he is feeling is_ ‘_Hook or me this time!_’ _He
+  is frightfully happy. He soon hits the trail, for the smoke from
+  the little house has lingered here and there to guide him. He takes
+  wing._)
+
+
+
+
+ACT V
+
+
+
+
+ACT V
+
+
+SCENE 1
+
+THE PIRATE SHIP
+
+_The stage directions for the opening of this scene are as follows:--1
+Circuit Amber checked to 80. Battens, all Amber checked, 3 ship’s
+lanterns alight, Arcs: prompt perch 1. Open dark amber flooding back,
+O.P. perch open dark amber flooding upper deck. Arc on tall steps at
+back of cabin to flood back cloth. Open dark Amber. Warning for slide.
+Plank ready. Call Hook._
+
+_In the strange light thus described we see what is happening on the
+deck of the_ Jolly Roger, _which is flying the skull and crossbones and
+lies low in the water. There is no need to call Hook, for he is here
+already, and indeed there is not a pirate aboard who would dare to call
+him. Most of them are at present carousing in the bowels of the vessel,
+but on the poop Mullins is visible, in the only great-coat on the ship,
+raking with his glass the monstrous rocks within which the lagoon is
+cooped. Such a look-out is supererogatory, for the pirate craft floats
+immune in the horror of her name._
+
+_From Hook’s cabin at the back Starkey appears and leans over the
+bulwark, silently surveying the sullen waters. He is bare-headed and is
+perhaps thinking with bitterness of his hat, which he sometimes sees
+still drifting past him with the Never bird sitting on it. The black
+pirate is asleep on deck, yet even in his dreams rolling mechanically
+out of the way when Hook draws near. The only sound to be heard is made
+by Smee at his sewing-machine, which lends a touch of domesticity to
+the night._
+
+_Hook is now leaning against the mast, now prowling the deck, the
+double cigar in his mouth. With Peter surely at last removed from his
+path we, who know how vain a tabernacle is man, would not be surprised
+to find him bellied out by the winds of his success, but it is not so;
+he is still uneasy, looking long and meaninglessly at familiar objects,
+such as the ship’s bell or the Long Tom, like one who may shortly be
+a stranger to them. It is as if Pan’s terrible oath ‘Hook or me this
+time!’ had already boarded the ship._
+
+HOOK (_communing with his ego_). How still the night is; nothing
+sounds alive. Now is the hour when children in their homes are a-bed;
+their lips bright-browned with the good-night chocolate, and their
+tongues drowsily searching for belated crumbs housed insecurely on
+their shining cheeks. Compare with them the children on this boat
+about to walk the plank. Split my infinitives, but ’tis my hour of
+triumph! (_Clinging to this fair prospect he dances a few jubilant
+steps, but they fall below his usual form._) And yet some disky spirit
+compels me now to make my dying speech, lest when dying there may be
+no time for it. All mortals envy me, yet better perhaps for Hook to
+have had less ambition! O fame, fame, thou glittering bauble, what if
+the very---- (SMEE, _engrossed in his labours at the sewing-machine,
+tears a piece of calico with a rending sound which makes the Solitary
+think for a moment that the untoward has happened to his garments_.)
+No little children love me. I am told they play at Peter Pan, and that
+the strongest always chooses to be Peter. They would rather be a Twin
+than Hook; they force the baby to be Hook. The baby! that is where
+the canker gnaws. (_He contemplates his industrious boatswain._)
+’Tis said they find Smee lovable. But an hour agone I found him
+letting the youngest of them try on his spectacles. Pathetic Smee, the
+Nonconformist pirate, a happy smile upon his face because he thinks
+they fear him! How can I break it to him that they think him lovable?
+No, bi-carbonate of Soda, no, not even---- (_Another rending of the
+calico disturbs him, and he has a private consultation with_ STARKEY,
+_who turns him round and evidently assures him that all is well. The
+peroration of his speech is nevertheless for ever lost, as eight bells
+strikes and his crew pour forth in bacchanalian orgy. From the poop
+he watches their dance till it frets him beyond bearing._) Quiet, you
+dogs, or I’ll cast anchor in you! (_He descends to a barrel on which
+there are playing-cards, and his crew stand waiting, as ever, like
+whipped curs._) Are all the prisoners chained, so that they can’t fly
+away?
+
+JUKES. Ay, ay, Captain.
+
+HOOK. Then hoist them up.
+
+STARKEY (_raising the door of the hold_). Tumble up, you ungentlemanly
+lubbers.
+
+  (_The terrified boys are prodded up and tossed about the deck._ HOOK
+  _seems to have forgotten them; he is sitting by the barrel with his
+  cards_.)
+
+HOOK (_suddenly_). So! Now then, you bullies, six of you walk the plank
+to-night, but I have room for two cabin-boys. Which of you is it to be?
+(_He returns to his cards._)
+
+TOOTLES (_hoping to soothe him by putting the blame on the only person,
+vaguely remembered, who is always willing to act as a buffer_). You
+see, sir, I don’t think my mother would like me to be a pirate. Would
+your mother like you to be a pirate, Slightly?
+
+SLIGHTLY (_implying that otherwise it would be a pleasure to him to
+oblige_). I don’t think so. Twin, would your mother like----
+
+HOOK. Stow this gab. (_To_ JOHN) You boy, you look as if you had a
+little pluck in you. Didst never want to be a pirate, my hearty?
+
+JOHN (_dazzled by being singled out_). When I was at school I--what do
+you think, Michael?
+
+MICHAEL (_stepping into prominence_). What would you call me if I
+joined?
+
+HOOK. Blackbeard Joe.
+
+MICHAEL. John, what do you think?
+
+JOHN. Stop, should we still be respectful subjects of King George?
+
+HOOK. You would have to swear ‘Down with King George.’
+
+JOHN (_grandly_). Then I refuse!
+
+MICHAEL. And I refuse.
+
+HOOK. That seals your doom. Bring up their mother.
+
+  (WENDY _is driven up from the hold and thrown to him. She sees at the
+  first glance that the deck has not been scrubbed for years._)
+
+So, my beauty, you are to see your children walk the plank.
+
+WENDY (_with noble calmness_). Are they to die?
+
+HOOK. They are. Silence all, for a mother’s last words to her children.
+
+WENDY. These are my last words. Dear boys, I feel that I have a message
+to you from your real mothers, and it is this, ‘We hope our sons will
+die like English gentlemen.’
+
+  (_The boys go on fire._)
+
+TOOTLES. I am going to do what my mother hopes. What are you to do,
+Twin?
+
+FIRST TWIN. What my mother hopes. John, what are----
+
+HOOK. Tie her up! Get the plank ready.
+
+  (WENDY _is roped to the mast; but no one regards her, for all eyes
+  are fixed upon the plank now protruding from the poop over the ship’s
+  side. A great change, however, occurs in the time_ HOOK _takes to
+  raise his claw and point to this deadly engine. No one is now looking
+  at the plank: for the tick, tick of the crocodile is heard. Yet it
+  is not to bear on the crocodile that all eyes slew round, it is that
+  they may bear on_ HOOK. _Otherwise prisoners and captors are equally
+  inert, like actors in some play who have found themselves ‘on’ in a
+  scene in which they are not personally concerned. Even the iron claw
+  hangs inactive, as if aware that the crocodile is not coming for it.
+  Affection for their captain, now cowering from view, is not what has
+  given_ HOOK _his dominance over the crew, but as the menacing sound
+  draws nearer they close their eyes respectfully_.
+
+  _There is no crocodile. It is_ PETER, _who has been circling the
+  pirate ship, ticking as he flies far more superbly than any clock.
+  He drops into the water and climbs aboard, warning the captives
+  with upraised finger (but still ticking) not for the moment to give
+  audible expression to their natural admiration. Only one pirate sees
+  him_, WHIBBLES _of the eye patch, who comes up from below_. JOHN
+  _claps a hand on_ WHIBBLES’ _mouth to stifle the groan; four boys
+  hold him to prevent the thud_; PETER _delivers the blow, and the
+  carrion is thrown overboard. ‘One!’ says_ SLIGHTLY, _beginning to
+  count_.
+
+  STARKEY _is the first pirate to open his eyes. The ship seems to
+  him to be precisely as when he closed them. He cannot interpret
+  the sparkle that has come into the faces of the captives, who are
+  cleverly pretending to be as afraid as ever. He little knows that the
+  door of the dark cabin has just closed on one more boy. Indeed it is
+  for_ HOOK _alone he looks, and he is a little surprised to see him_.)
+
+STARKEY (_hoarsely_). It is gone, Captain! There is not a sound.
+
+  (_The tenement that is_ HOOK _heaves tumultuously and he is himself
+  again_.)
+
+HOOK (_now convinced that some fair spirit watches over him_). Then
+here is to Johnny Plank--
+
+    Avast, belay, the English brig
+    We took and quickly sank,
+    And for a warning to the crew
+    We made them walk the plank!
+
+  (_As he sings he capers detestably along an imaginary plank and his
+  copy-cats do likewise, joining in the chorus._)
+
+    Yo ho, yo ho, the frisky cat,
+    You walks along it so,
+    Till it goes down and you goes down
+    To tooral looral lo!
+
+  (_The brave children try to stem this monstrous torrent by breaking
+  into the National Anthem._)
+
+STARKEY (_paling_). I don’t like it, messmates!
+
+HOOK. Stow that, Starkey. Do you boys want a touch of the cat before
+you walk the plank? (_He is more pitiless than ever now that he
+believes he has a charmed life._) Fetch the cat, Jukes; it is in the
+cabin.
+
+JUKES. Ay, ay, sir. (_It is one of his commonest remarks, and is only
+recorded now because he never makes another. The stage direction_
+‘_Exit_ JUKES’ _has in this case a special significance. But only the
+children know that some one is awaiting this unfortunate in the cabin,
+and_ HOOK _tramples them down as he resumes his ditty_:)
+
+    Yo ho, yo ho, the scratching cat
+    Its tails are nine you know,
+    And when they’re writ upon your back,
+    You’re fit to----
+
+  (_The last words will ever remain a matter of conjecture, for from
+  the dark cabin comes a curdling screech which wails through the ship
+  and dies away. It is followed by a sound, almost more eerie in the
+  circumstances, that can only be likened to the crowing of a cock._)
+
+HOOK. What was that?
+
+SLIGHTLY (_solemnly_). Two!
+
+  (CECCO _swings into the cabin, and in a moment returns, livid_.)
+
+HOOK (_with an effort_). What is the matter with Bill Jukes, you dog?
+
+CECCO. The matter with him is he is dead--stabbed.
+
+PIRATES. Bill Jukes dead!
+
+CECCO. The cabin is as black as a pit, but there is something terrible
+in there: the thing you heard a-crowing.
+
+HOOK (_slowly_). Cecco, go back and fetch me out that doodle-doo.
+
+CECCO (_unstrung_). No, Captain, no. (_He supplicates on his knees, but
+his master advances on him implacably._)
+
+HOOK (_in his most syrupy voice_). Did you say you would go, Cecco?
+
+  (CECCO _goes. All listen. There is one screech, one crow._)
+
+SLIGHTLY (_as if he were a bell tolling_). Three!
+
+HOOK. ’Sdeath and oddsfish, who is to bring me out that doodle-doo?
+
+  (_No one steps forward._)
+
+STARKEY (_injudiciously_). Wait till Cecco comes out.
+
+  (_The black looks of some others encourage him._)
+
+HOOK. I think I heard you volunteer, Starkey.
+
+STARKEY (_emphatically_). No, by thunder!
+
+HOOK (_in that syrupy voice which might be more engaging when
+accompanied by his flute_). My hook thinks you did. I wonder if it
+would not be advisable, Starkey, to humour the hook?
+
+STARKEY. I’ll swing before I go in there.
+
+HOOK (_gleaming_). Is it mutiny? Starkey is ringleader. Shake hands,
+Starkey.
+
+  (STARKEY _recoils from the claw. It follows him till he leaps
+  overboard._)
+
+Did any other gentleman say mutiny?
+
+  (_They indicate that they did not even know the late_ STARKEY.)
+
+SLIGHTLY. Four!
+
+HOOK. I will bring out that doodle-doo myself.
+
+  (_He raises a blunderbuss but casts it from him with a menacing
+  gesture which means that he has more faith in the claw. With a
+  lighted lantern in his hand he enters the cabin. Not a sound is to
+  be heard now on the ship, unless it be_ SLIGHTLY _wetting his lips to
+  say ‘Five.’_ HOOK _staggers out_.)
+
+HOOK (_unsteadily_). Something blew out the light.
+
+MULLINS (_with dark meaning_). Some--thing?
+
+NOODLER. What of Cecco?
+
+HOOK. He is as dead as Jukes.
+
+  (_They are superstitious like all sailors, and_ MULLINS _has planted
+  a dire conception in their minds_.)
+
+COOKSON. They do say as the surest sign a ship’s accurst is when there
+is one aboard more than can be accounted for.
+
+NOODLER. I’ve heard he allus boards the pirate craft at last. (_With
+dreadful significance_) Has he a tail, Captain?
+
+MULLINS. They say that when he comes it is in the likeness of the
+wickedest man aboard.
+
+COOKSON (_clinching it_). Has he a hook, Captain?
+
+  (_Knives and pistols come to hand, and there is a general cry ‘The
+  ship is doomed!’ But it is not his dogs that can frighten_ JAS HOOK.
+  _Hearing something like a cheer from the boys he wheels round, and
+  his face brings them to their knees._)
+
+HOOK. So you like it, do you! By Caius and Balbus, bullies, here is
+a notion: open the cabin door and drive them in. Let them fight the
+doodle-doo for their lives. If they kill him we are so much the better;
+if he kills them we are none the worse.
+
+  (_This masterly stroke restores their confidence; and the boys,
+  affecting fear, are driven into the cabin. Desperadoes though the
+  pirates are, some of them have been boys themselves, and all turn
+  their backs to the cabin and listen, with arms outstretched to it as
+  if to ward off the horrors that are being enacted there._
+
+  _Relieved by_ PETER _of their manacles, and armed with such weapons
+  as they can lay their hands on, the boys steal out softly as
+  snowflakes, and under their captain’s hushed order find hiding-places
+  on the poop. He releases_ WENDY; _and now it would be easy for them
+  all to fly away, but it is to be_ HOOK _or him this time. He signs
+  to her to join the others, and with awful grimness folding her cloak
+  around him, the hood over his head, he takes her place by the mast,
+  and crows._)
+
+MULLINS. The doodle-doo has killed them all!
+
+SEVERAL. The ship’s bewitched.
+
+  (_They are snapping at_ HOOK _again_.)
+
+HOOK. I’ve thought it out, lads; there is a Jonah aboard.
+
+SEVERAL (_advancing upon him_). Ay, a man with a hook.
+
+  (_If he were to withdraw one step their knives would be in him, but
+  he does not flinch._)
+
+HOOK (_temporising_). No, lads, no, it is the girl. Never was luck on a
+pirate ship wi’ a woman aboard. We’ll right the ship when she has gone.
+
+MULLINS (_lowering his cutlass_). It’s worth trying.
+
+HOOK. Throw the girl overboard.
+
+MULLINS (_jeering_). There is none can save you now, missy.
+
+PETER. There is one.
+
+MULLINS. Who is that?
+
+PETER (_casting off the cloak_). Peter Pan, the avenger!
+
+  (_He continues standing there to let the effect sink in._)
+
+HOOK (_throwing out a suggestion_). Cleave him to the brisket.
+
+  (_But he has a sinking feeling that this boy has no brisket._)
+
+NOODLER. The ship’s accurst!
+
+PETER. Down, boys, and at them!
+
+  (_The boys leap from their concealment and the clash of arms resounds
+  through the vessel. Man to man the pirates are the stronger, but they
+  are unnerved by the suddenness of the onslaught and they scatter,
+  thus enabling their opponents to hunt in couples and choose their
+  quarry. Some are hurled into the lagoon; others are dragged from dark
+  recesses. There is no boy whose weapon is not reeking save_ SLIGHTLY,
+  _who runs about with a lantern, counting, ever counting_.)
+
+WENDY (_meeting_ MICHAEL _in a moment’s lull_). Oh, Michael, stay with
+me, protect me!
+
+MICHAEL (_reeling_). Wendy, I’ve killed a pirate!
+
+WENDY. It’s awful, awful.
+
+MICHAEL. No, it isn’t, I like it, I like it.
+
+  (_He casts himself into the group of boys who are encircling_ HOOK.
+  _Again and again they close upon him and again and again he hews a
+  clear space._)
+
+HOOK. Back, back, you mice. It’s Hook; do you like him? (_He lifts up_
+MICHAEL _with his claw and uses him as a buckler. A terrible voice
+breaks in._)
+
+PETER. Put up your swords, boys. This man is mine.
+
+  (HOOK _shakes_ MICHAEL _off his claw as if he were a drop of water,
+  and these two antagonists face each other for their final bout. They
+  measure swords at arms’ length, make a sweeping motion with them, and
+  bringing the points to the deck rest their hands upon the hilts._)
+
+HOOK (_with curling lip_). So, Pan, this is all your doing!
+
+PETER. Ay, Jas Hook, it is all my doing.
+
+HOOK. Proud and insolent youth, prepare to meet thy doom.
+
+PETER. Dark and sinister man, have at thee.
+
+  (_Some say that he had to ask_ TOOTLES _whether the word was sinister
+  or canister_.
+
+  HOOK _or_ PETER _this time! They fall to without another word._ PETER
+  _is a rare swordsman, and parries with dazzling rapidity, sometimes
+  before the other can make his stroke_. HOOK, _if not quite so nimble
+  in wrist play, has the advantage of a yard or two in reach, but
+  though they close he cannot give the quietus with his claw, which
+  seems to find nothing to tear at. He does not, especially in the most
+  heated moments, quite see_ PETER, _who to his eyes, now blurred or
+  opened clearly for the first time, is less like a boy than a mote of
+  dust dancing in the sun. By some impalpable stroke_ HOOK’S _sword is
+  whipped from his grasp, and when he stoops to raise it a little foot
+  is on its blade. There is no deep gash on_ HOOK, _but he is suffering
+  torment as from innumerable jags_.)
+
+BOYS (_exulting_). Now, Peter, now!
+
+  (PETER _raises the sword by its blade, and with an inclination of
+  the head that is perhaps slightly overdone, presents the hilt to his
+  enemy_.)
+
+HOOK. ’Tis some fiend fighting me! Pan, who and what art thou?
+
+  (_The children listen eagerly for the answer, none quite so eagerly
+  as_ WENDY.)
+
+PETER (_at a venture_). I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has
+broken out of the egg.
+
+HOOK. To ’t again!
+
+  (_He has now a damp feeling that this boy is the weapon which is to
+  strike him from the lists of man; but the grandeur of his mind still
+  holds and, true to the traditions of his flag, he fights on like
+  a human flail._ PETER _flutters round and through and over these
+  gyrations as if the wind of them blew him out of the danger zone, and
+  again and again he darts in and jags_.)
+
+HOOK (_stung to madness_). I’ll fire the powder magazine. (_He
+disappears they know not where._)
+
+CHILDREN. Peter, save us!
+
+  (PETER, _alas, goes the wrong way and_ HOOK _returns_.)
+
+HOOK (_sitting on the hold with gloomy satisfaction_). In two minutes
+the ship will be blown to pieces.
+
+  (_They cast themselves before him in entreaty._)
+
+CHILDREN. Mercy, mercy!
+
+HOOK. Back, you pewling spawn. I’ll show you now the road to dusty
+death. A holocaust of children, there is something grand in the idea!
+
+  (PETER _appears with the smoking bomb in his hand and tosses it
+  overboard_. HOOK _has not really had much hope, and he rushes at his
+  other persecutors with his head down like some exasperated bull in
+  the ring; but with bantering cries they easily elude him by flying
+  among the rigging_.
+
+  _Where is_ PETER? _The incredible boy has apparently forgotten the
+  recent doings, and is sitting on a barrel playing upon his pipes.
+  This may surprise others but does not surprise_ HOOK. _Lifting a
+  blunderbuss he strikes forlornly not at the boy but at the barrel,
+  which is hurled across the deck._ PETER _remains sitting in the air
+  still playing upon his pipes. At this sight the great heart of_
+  HOOK _breaks. That not wholly unheroic figure climbs the bulwarks
+  murmuring_ ‘Floreat Etona,’ _and prostrates himself into the water,
+  where the crocodile is waiting for him open-mouthed_. HOOK _knows the
+  purpose of this yawning cavity, but after what he has gone through he
+  enters it like one greeting a friend_.
+
+  _The curtain rises to show_ PETER _a very Napoleon on his ship. It
+  must not rise again lest we see him on the poop in_ HOOK’S _hat and
+  cigars, and with a small iron claw_.)
+
+
+Scene 2
+
+THE NURSERY AND THE TREE-TOPS
+
+_The old nursery appears again with everything just as it was at the
+beginning of the play, except that the kennel has gone and that the
+window is standing open. So Peter was wrong about mothers; indeed there
+is no subject on which he is so likely to be wrong._
+
+_Mrs. Darling is asleep on a chair near the window, her eyes tired with
+searching the heavens. Nana is stretched out listless on the floor. She
+is the cynical one, and though custom has made her hang the children’s
+night things on the fire-guard for an airing, she surveys them not
+hopefully but with some self-contempt._
+
+MRS. DARLING (_starting up as if we had whispered to her that her brats
+are coming back_). Wendy, John, Michael! (NANA _lifts a sympathetic
+paw to the poor soul’s lap_.) I see you have put their night things
+out again, Nana! It touches my heart to watch you do that night after
+night. But they will never come back.
+
+  (_In trouble the difference of station can be completely ignored,
+  and it is not strange to see these two using the same handkerchief.
+  Enter_ LIZA, _who in the gentleness with which the house has been run
+  of late is perhaps a little more masterful than of yore_.)
+
+LIZA (_feeling herself degraded by the announcement_). Nana’s dinner is
+served.
+
+  (NANA, _who quite understands what are_ LIZA’S _feelings, departs
+  for the dining-room with our exasperating leisureliness, instead of
+  running, as we would all do if we followed our instincts_.)
+
+LIZA. To think I have a master as have changed places with his dog!
+
+MRS. DARLING (_gently_). Out of remorse, Liza.
+
+LIZA (_surely exaggerating_). I am a married woman myself. I don’t
+think it’s respectable to go to his office in a kennel, with the
+street boys running alongside cheering. (_Even this does not rouse her
+mistress, which may have been the honourable intention._) There, that
+is the cab fetching him back! (_Amid interested cheers from the street
+the kennel is conveyed to its old place by a cabby and friend, and_
+MR. DARLING _scrambles out of it in his office clothes_.)
+
+MR. DARLING (_giving her his hat loftily_). If you will be so good,
+Liza. (_The cheering is resumed._) It is very gratifying!
+
+LIZA (_contemptuous_). Lot of little boys.
+
+MR. DARLING (_with the new sweetness of one who has sworn never to lose
+his temper again_). There were several adults to-day.
+
+  (_She goes off scornfully with the hat and the two men, but he has
+  not a word of reproach for her. It ought to melt us when we see how
+  humbly grateful he is for a kiss from his wife, so much more than he
+  feels he deserves. One may think he is wrong to exchange into the
+  kennel, but sorrow has taught him that he is the kind of man who
+  whatever he does contritely he must do to excess; otherwise he soon
+  abandons doing it._)
+
+MRS. DARLING (_who has known this for quite a long time_). What sort of
+a day have you had, George?
+
+  (_He is sitting on the floor by the kennel._)
+
+MR. DARLING. There were never less than a hundred running round the
+cab cheering, and when we passed the Stock Exchange the members came
+out and waved.
+
+  (_He is exultant but uncertain of himself, and with a word she could
+  dispirit him utterly._)
+
+MRS. DARLING (_bravely_). I am so proud, George.
+
+MR. DARLING (_commendation from the dearest quarter ever going to his
+head_). I have been put on a picture postcard, dear.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_nobly_). Never!
+
+MR. DARLING (_thoughtlessly_). Ah, Mary, we should not be such
+celebrities if the children hadn’t flown away.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_startled_). George, you are sure you are not enjoying it?
+
+MR. DARLING (_anxiously_). Enjoying it! See my punishment: living in a
+kennel.
+
+MRS. DARLING. Forgive me, dear one.
+
+MR. DARLING. It is I who need forgiveness, always I, never you. And now
+I feel drowsy. (_He retires into the kennel._) Won’t you play me to
+sleep on the nursery piano? And shut that window, Mary dearest; I feel
+a draught.
+
+MRS. DARLING. Oh, George, never ask me to do that. The window must
+always be left open for them, always, always.
+
+  (_She goes into the day nursery, from which we presently hear her
+  playing the sad song of Margaret. She little knows that her last
+  remark has been overheard by a boy crouching at the window. He steals
+  into the room accompanied by a ball of light._)
+
+PETER. Tink, where are you? Quick, close the window. (_It closes._)
+Bar it. (_The bar slams down._) Now when Wendy comes she will think
+her mother has barred her out, and she will have to come back to
+me! (TINKER BELL _sulks_.) Now, Tink, you and I must go out by the
+door. (_Doors, however, are confusing things to those who are used
+to windows, and he is puzzled when he finds that this one does not
+open on to the firmament. He tries the other, and sees the piano
+player._) It is Wendy’s mother! (TINK _pops on to his shoulder and
+they peep together_.) She is a pretty lady, but not so pretty as my
+mother. (_This is a pure guess._) She is making the box say ‘Come
+home, Wendy.’ You will never see Wendy again, lady, for the window is
+barred! (_He flutters about the room joyously like a bird, but has to
+return to that door._) She has laid her head down on the box. There are
+two wet things sitting on her eyes. As soon as they go away another
+two come and sit on her eyes. (_She is heard moaning ‘Wendy, Wendy,
+Wendy.’_) She wants me to unbar the window. I won’t! She is awfully
+fond of Wendy. I am fond of her too. We can’t both have her, lady! (_A
+funny feeling comes over him._) Come on, Tink; we don’t want any silly
+mothers.
+
+  (_He opens the window and they fly out._
+
+  _It is thus that the truants find entrance easy when they alight on
+  the sill_, JOHN _to his credit having the tired_ MICHAEL _on his
+  shoulders. They have nothing else to their credit; no compunction for
+  what they have done, not the tiniest fear that any just person may be
+  awaiting them with a stick. The youngest is in a daze, but the two
+  others are shining virtuously like holy people who are about to give
+  two other people a treat._)
+
+MICHAEL (_looking about him_). I think I have been here before.
+
+JOHN. It’s your home, you stupid.
+
+WENDY. There is your old bed, Michael.
+
+MICHAEL. I had nearly forgotten.
+
+JOHN. I say, the kennel!
+
+WENDY. Perhaps Nana is in it.
+
+JOHN (_peering_). There is a man asleep in it.
+
+WENDY (_remembering him by the bald patch_). It’s father!
+
+JOHN. So it is!
+
+MICHAEL. Let me see father. (_Disappointed_) He is not as big as the
+pirate I killed.
+
+JOHN (_perplexed_). Wendy, surely father didn’t use to sleep in the
+kennel?
+
+WENDY (_with misgivings_). Perhaps we don’t remember the old life as
+well as we thought we did.
+
+JOHN (_chilled_). It is very careless of mother not to be here when we
+come back.
+
+  (_The piano is heard again._)
+
+WENDY. H’sh! (_She goes to the door and peeps._) That is her playing!
+(_They all have a peep._)
+
+MICHAEL. Who is that lady?
+
+JOHN. H’sh! It’s mother.
+
+MICHAEL. Then are you not really our mother, Wendy?
+
+WENDY (_with conviction_). Oh dear, it is quite time to be back!
+
+JOHN. Let us creep in and put our hands over her eyes.
+
+WENDY (_more considerate_). No, let us break it to her gently.
+
+  (_She slips between the sheets of her bed; and the others, seeing the
+  idea at once, get into their beds. Then when the music stops they
+  cover their heads. There are now three distinct bumps in the beds._
+  MRS. DARLING _sees the bumps as soon as she comes in, but she does
+  not believe she sees them_.)
+
+MRS. DARLING. I see them in their beds so often in my dreams that I
+seem still to see them when I am awake! I’ll not look again. (_She sits
+down and turns away her face from the bumps, though of course they are
+still reflected in her mind._) So often their silver voices call me,
+my little children whom I’ll see no more.
+
+  (_Silver voices is a good one, especially about_ JOHN; _but the heads
+  pop up_.)
+
+WENDY (_perhaps rather silvery_). Mother!
+
+MRS. DARLING (_without moving_). That is Wendy.
+
+JOHN (_quite gruff_). Mother!
+
+MRS. DARLING. Now it is John.
+
+MICHAEL (_no better than a squeak_). Mother!
+
+MRS. DARLING. Now Michael. And when they call I stretch out my arms to
+them, but they never come, they never come!
+
+  (_This time, however, they come, and there is joy once more in the
+  Darling household. The little boy who is crouching at the window sees
+  the joke of the bumps in the beds, but cannot understand what all the
+  rest of the fuss is about._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  _The scene changes from the inside of the house to the outside, and
+  we see_ MR. DARLING _romping in at the door, with the lost boys
+  hanging gaily to his coat-tails. So we may conclude that_ WENDY _has
+  told them to wait outside until she explains the situation to her
+  mother, who has then sent_ MR. DARLING _down to tell them that they
+  are adopted. Of course they could have flown in by the window like
+  a covey of birds, but they think it better fun to enter by a door.
+  There is a moment’s trouble about_ SLIGHTLY, _who somehow gets shut
+  out. Fortunately_ LIZA _finds him_.)
+
+LIZA. What is the matter, boy?
+
+SLIGHTLY. They have all got a mother except me.
+
+LIZA (_starting back_). Is your name Slightly?
+
+SLIGHTLY. Yes’m.
+
+LIZA. Then I am your mother.
+
+SLIGHTLY. How do you know?
+
+LIZA (_the good-natured creature_). I feel it in my bones.
+
+  (_They go into the house and there is none happier now than_
+  SLIGHTLY, _unless it be_ NANA _as she passes with the importance of a
+  nurse who will never have another day off_. WENDY _looks out at the
+  nursery window and sees a friend below, who is hovering in the air
+  knocking off tall hats with his feet. The wearers don’t see him. They
+  are too old. You can’t see_ PETER _if you are old. They think he is a
+  draught at the corner._)
+
+WENDY. Peter!
+
+PETER (_looking up casually_). Hullo, Wendy.
+
+  (_She flies down to him, to the horror of her mother, who rushes to
+  the window._)
+
+WENDY (_making a last attempt_). You don’t feel you would like to say
+anything to my parents, Peter, about a very sweet subject?
+
+PETER. No, Wendy.
+
+WENDY. About me, Peter?
+
+PETER. No.
+
+  (_He gets out his pipes, which she knows is a very bad sign. She
+  appeals with her arms to_ MRS. DARLING, _who is probably thinking
+  that these children will all need to be tied to their beds at night_.)
+
+MRS. DARLING (_from the window_). Peter, where are you? Let me adopt
+you too.
+
+  (_She is the loveliest age for a woman, but too old to see_ PETER
+  _clearly_.)
+
+PETER. Would you send me to school?
+
+MRS. DARLING (_obligingly_). Yes.
+
+PETER. And then to an office?
+
+MRS. DARLING. I suppose so.
+
+PETER. Soon I should be a man?
+
+MRS. DARLING. Very soon.
+
+PETER (_passionately_). I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn
+things. No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want
+always to be a little boy and to have fun.
+
+  (_So perhaps he thinks, but it is only his greatest pretend._)
+
+MRS. DARLING (_shivering every time_ WENDY _pursues him in the air_).
+Where are you to live, Peter?
+
+PETER. In the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to put it high
+up among the tree-tops where they sleep at night.
+
+WENDY (_rapturously_). To think of it!
+
+MRS. DARLING. I thought all the fairies were dead.
+
+WENDY (_almost reprovingly_). No indeed! Their mothers drop the babies
+into the Never birds’ nests, all mixed up with the eggs, and the mauve
+fairies are boys and the white ones are girls, and there are some
+colours who don’t know what they are. The row the children and the
+birds make at bath time is positively deafening.
+
+PETER. I throw things at them.
+
+WENDY. You will be rather lonely in the evenings, Peter.
+
+PETER. I shall have Tink.
+
+WENDY (_flying up to the window_). Mother, may I go?
+
+MRS. DARLING (_gripping her for ever_). Certainly not. I have got you
+home again, and I mean to keep you.
+
+WENDY. But he does so need a mother.
+
+MRS. DARLING. So do you, my love.
+
+PETER. Oh, all right.
+
+MRS. DARLING (_magnanimously_). But, Peter, I shall let her go to you
+once a year for a week to do your spring cleaning.
+
+  (WENDY _revels in this, but_ PETER, _who has no notion what a spring
+  cleaning is, waves a rather careless thanks_.)
+
+MRS. DARLING. Say good-night, Wendy.
+
+WENDY. I couldn’t go down just for a minute?
+
+MRS. DARLING. No.
+
+WENDY. Good-night, Peter!
+
+PETER. Good-night, Wendy!
+
+WENDY. Peter, you won’t forget me, will you, before spring-cleaning
+time comes?
+
+  (_There is no answer, for he is already soaring high. For a moment
+  after he is gone we still hear the pipes._ MRS. DARLING _closes and
+  bars the window_.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_We are dreaming now of the Never Land a year later. It is bed-time
+on the island, and the blind goes up to the whispers of the lovely
+Never music. The blue haze that makes the wood below magical by day
+comes up to the tree-tops to sleep, and through it we see numberless
+nests all lit up, fairies and birds quarrelling for possession, others
+flying around just for the fun of the thing and perhaps making bets
+about where the little house will appear to-night. It always comes and
+snuggles on some tree-top, but you can never be sure which; here it is
+again, you see John’s hat first as up comes the house so softly that it
+knocks some gossips off their perch. When it has settled comfortably
+it lights up, and out come Peter and Wendy._
+
+_Wendy looks a little older, but Peter is just the same. She is cloaked
+for a journey, and a sad confession must be made about her; she flies
+so badly now that she has to use a broomstick._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WENDY (_who knows better this time than to be demonstrative at
+partings_). Well, good-bye, Peter; and remember not to bite your nails.
+
+PETER. Good-bye, Wendy.
+
+WENDY. I’ll tell mother all about the spring cleaning and the house.
+
+PETER (_who sometimes forgets that she has been here before_). You do
+like the house?
+
+WENDY. Of course it is small. But most people of our size wouldn’t
+have a house at all. (_She should not have mentioned size, for he has
+already expressed displeasure at her growth. Another thing, one he has
+scarcely noticed, though it disturbs her, is that she does not see him
+quite so clearly now as she used to do._) When you come for me next
+year, Peter--you will come, won’t you?
+
+PETER. Yes. (_Gloating_) To hear stories about me!
+
+WENDY. It is so queer that the stories you like best should be the ones
+about yourself.
+
+PETER (_touchy_). Well, then?
+
+WENDY. Fancy your forgetting the lost boys, and even Captain Hook!
+
+PETER. Well, then?
+
+WENDY. I haven’t seen Tink this time.
+
+PETER. Who?
+
+WENDY. Oh dear! I suppose it is because you have so many adventures.
+
+PETER (_relieved_). ’Course it is.
+
+WENDY. If another little girl--if one younger than I am---- (_She can’t
+go on._) Oh, Peter, how I wish I could take you up and squdge you! (_He
+draws back._) Yes, I know. (_She gets astride her broomstick._) Home!
+(_It carries her from him over the tree-tops._
+
+  _In a sort of way he understands what she means by ‘Yes, I know,’ but
+  in most sorts of ways he doesn’t. It has something to do with the
+  riddle of his being. If he could get the hang of the thing his cry
+  might become ‘To live would be an awfully big adventure!’ but he can
+  never quite get the hang of it, and so no one is as gay as he. With
+  rapturous face he produces his pipes, and the Never birds and the
+  fairies gather closer till the roof of the little house is so thick
+  with his admirers that some of them fall down the chimney. He plays
+  on and on till we wake up._)
+
+
+_The End_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note
+
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Italization
+was standardized.
+
+Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
+changes:
+
+  Page 48: “the tidings has leaked”        “the tidings have leaked”
+  Page 140: “he has a sinking”             “he has a sinking feeling”
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78131 ***