All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they willgrow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was twoyears old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flowerand ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked ratherdelightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried,"Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all thatpassed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew thatshe must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is thebeginning of the end.

Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street],and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady,with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.

The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen whohad been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously thatthey loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to herexcept Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so hegot her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and thekiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up tryingfor the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but Ican picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slammingthe door.

Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not onlyloved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones whoknow about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows,but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up andshares were down in a way that would have made any woman respecthim.

Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept thebooks perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not somuch as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by wholecauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were picturesof babies without faces. She drew them when she should have beentotting up. They were Mrs. Darling's guesses.

Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether theywould be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr.Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable,and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her handand calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his way;his way was with a pencil and a piece of paper, and if sheconfused him with suggestions he had to begin at the beginningagain.

"Now don't interrupt," he would beg of her. "I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office;I can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, makingtwo nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven,with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven --who is that moving? -- eight nine seven, dot and carry seven --don't speak, my own -- and the pound you lent to that man who came tothe door -- quiet, child -- dot and carry child -- there, you'vedone it! -- did I say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nineseven; the question is, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?"

"Of course we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudicedin Wendy's favour, and he was really the grander character of thetwo.

"Remember mumps," he warned her almost threateningly, and offhe went again. "Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down,but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings -- don'tspeak -- measles one five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six -- don't waggle your finger -- whooping-cough,say fifteen shillings" -- and so on it went, and it added updifferently each time; but at last Wendy just got through,with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measlestreated as one.

There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even anarrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seenthe three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergartenschool, accompanied by their nurse.

Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darlinghad a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, ofcourse, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amountof milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundlanddog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular untilthe Darlings engaged her. She had always thought childrenimportant, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted withher in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare timepeeping into perambulators, and was much hated by carelessnursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of totheir mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of thenight if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of courseher kennel was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing whena cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needsstocking around your throat. She believed to her last day inold-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds ofcontempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children toschool, walking sedately by their side when they were wellbehaved, and butting them back into line if they strayed. OnJohn's footer [in England soccer was called football, "footer for short] days she never once forgot his sweater, and sheusually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. Thereis a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school where thenurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor,but that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her asof an inferior social status to themselves, and she despisedtheir light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs.Darling's friends, but if they did come she first whipped offMichael's pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding,and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.

No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly,and Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasilywhether the neighbours talked.

He had his position in the city to consider.

Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes afeeling that she did not admire him. "I know she admires youtremendously, George," Mrs. Darling would assure him, and thenshe would sign to the children to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in which the only other servant, Liza,was sometimes allowed to join. Such a midget she looked in herlong skirt and maid's cap, though she had sworn, when engaged,that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of those romps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildlythat all you could see of her was the kiss, and then if you haddashed at her you might have got it. There never was a simplerhappier family until the coming of Peter Pan.

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up herchildren's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good motherafter her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and putthings straight for next morning, repacking into their properplaces the many articles that have wandered during the day. Ifyou could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see yourown mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting towatch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would seeher on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some ofyour contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thingup, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this toher cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedlystowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, thenaughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed havebeen folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind andon the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettierthoughts, ready for you to put on.

I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person'smind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, andyour own map can become intensely interesting, but catch themtrying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not onlyconfused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzaglines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these areprobably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more orless an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here andthere, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing,and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors,and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elderbrothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small oldlady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that wereall, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers,the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that takethe dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, sayninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, andso on, and either these are part of the island or they areanother map showing through, and it is all rather confusing,especially as nothing will stand still.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, forinstance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at whichJohn was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had aflamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boatturned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in ahouse of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends,Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken byits parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a familyresemblance, and if they stood still in a row you could say of themthat they have each other's nose, and so forth. On these magicshores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles[simple boat]. We too have been there; we can still hear thesound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest andmost compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tediousdistances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it isnot in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go tosleep it becomes very real. That is why there are night-lights.

Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs.Darling found things she could not understand, and of these quitethe most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter,and yet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds, whileWendy's began to be scrawled all over with him. The name stoodout in bolder letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs.Darling gazed she felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.

"Yes, he is rather cocky," Wendy admitted with regret. Hermother had been questioning her.

"But who is he, my pet?"

"He is Peter Pan, you know, mother."

At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking backinto her childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was saidto live with the fairies. There were odd stories about him, asthat when children died he went part of the way with them, sothat they should not be frightened. She had believed in him atthe time, but now that she was married and full of sense shequite doubted whether there was any such person.

"Besides," she said to Wendy, "he would be grown up by thistime."

"Oh no, he isn't grown up," Wendy assured her confidently, "andhe is just my size." She meant that he was her size in both mindand body; she didn't know how she knew, she just knew it.

Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he smiled pooh-pooh. "Mark my words," he said, "it is some nonsense Nana has beenputting into their heads; just the sort of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone, and it will blow over."

But it would not blow over and soon the troublesome boy gaveMrs. Darling quite a shock.

Children have the strangest adventures without being troubledby them. For instance, they may remember to mention, a weekafter the event happened, that when they were in the wood theyhad met their dead father and had a game with him. It was inthis casual way that Wendy one morning made a disquietingrevelation. Some leaves of a tree had been found on the nurseryfloor, which certainly were not there when the children went tobed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them when Wendy said witha tolerant smile:

"I do believe it is that Peter again!"

"Whatever do you mean, Wendy?"

"It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet," Wendy said,sighing. She was a tidy child.

She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thoughtPeter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on thefoot of her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunatelyshe never woke, so she didn't know how she knew, she just knew.

"What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into thehouse without knocking."

"I think he comes in by the window," she said.

"My love, it is three floors up."

"Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, mother?"

It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near thewindow.

Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed sonatural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she hadbeen dreaming.

"My child," the mother cried, "why did you not tell me of thisbefore?"

"I forgot," said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get herbreakfast.

Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darlingexamined them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but shewas sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle formarks of a strange foot. She rattled the poker up the chimneyand tapped the walls. She let down a tape from the window to thepavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so muchas a spout to climb up by.

Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.

But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed,the night on which the extraordinary adventures of these childrenmay be said to have begun.

On the night we speak of all the children were once more inbed. It happened to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling hadbathed them and sung to them till one by one they had let go herhand and slid away into the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fearsnow and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.

It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was gettinginto shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimlylit by three night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Mrs.Darling's lap. Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She wasasleep. Look at the four of them, Wendy and Michael over there,John here, and Mrs. Darling by the fire. There should have beena fourth night-light.

While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverlandhad come too near and that a strange boy had broken through fromit. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen himbefore in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhapshe is to be found in the faces of some mothers also. But in herdream he had rent the film that obscures the Neverland, and shesaw Wendy and John and Michael peeping through the gap.

The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she wasdreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did dropon the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light, no biggerthan your fist, which darted about the room like a living thingand I think it must have been this light that wakened Mrs.Darling.

She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow sheknew at once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy hadbeen there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs.Darling's kiss. He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves andthe juices that ooze out of trees but the most entrancing thingabout him was that he had all his first teeth. When he saw shewas a grown-up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.