One of the first things Peter did next day was to measure Wendyand John and Michael for hollow trees. Hook, you remember, hadsneered at the boys for thinking they needed a tree apiece, butthis was ignorance, for unless your tree fitted you it wasdifficult to go up and down, and no two of the boys were quitethe same size. Once you fitted, you drew in [let out] yourbreath at the top, and down you went at exactly the right speed,while to ascend you drew in and let out alternately, and sowriggled up. Of course, when you have mastered the action youare able to do these things without thinking of them, and nothingcan be more graceful.

But you simply must fit, and Peter measures you for your treeas carefully as for a suit of clothes: the only difference beingthat the clothes are made to fit you, while you have to be madeto fit the tree. Usually it is done quite easily, as by yourwearing too many garments or too few, but if you are bumpy inawkward places or the only available tree is an odd shape, Peterdoes some things to you, and after that you fit. Once you fit,great care must be taken to go on fitting, and this, as Wendy wasto discover to her delight, keeps a whole family in perfectcondition.

Wendy and Michael fitted their trees at the first try, but Johnhad to be altered a little.

After a few days' practice they could go up and down as gailyas buckets in a well. And how ardently they grew to love theirhome under the ground; especially Wendy. It consisted of onelarge room, as all houses should do, with a floor in which youcould dig [for worms] if you wanted to go fishing, and in thisfloor grew stout mushrooms of a charming colour, which were usedas stools. A Never tree tried hard to grow in the centre of theroom, but every morning they sawed the trunk through, level withthe floor. By tea-time it was always about two feet high, andthen they put a door on top of it, the whole thus becoming atable; as soon as they cleared away, they sawed off the trunkagain, and thus there was more room to play. There was anenourmous fireplace which was in almost any part of the roomwhere you cared to light it, and across this Wendy stretchedstrings, made of fibre, from which she suspended her washing. The bed was tilted against the wall by day, and let down at 6:30,when it filled nearly half the room; and all the boys slept in it, except Michael, lying like sardines in a tin. There was astrict rule against turning round until one gave the signal, whenall turned at once. Michael should have used it also, but Wendywould have [desired] a baby, and he was the littlest, and you knowwhat women are, and the short and long of it is that he was hungup in a basket.

It was rough and simple, and not unlike what baby bears wouldhave made of an underground house in the same circumstances. Butthere was one recess in the wall, no larger than a bird-cage,which was the private apartment of Tinker Bell. It could be shutoff from the rest of the house by a tiny curtain, which Tink, whowas most fastidious [particular], always kept drawn when dressingor undressing. No woman, however large, could have had a moreexquisite boudoir [dressing room] and bed-chamber combined. Thecouch, as she always called it, was a genuine Queen Mab, withclub legs; and she varied the bedspreads according to what fruit-blossom was in season. Her mirror was a Puss-in-Boots, of whichthere are now only three, unchipped, known to fairy dealers; thewashstand was Pie-crust and reversible, the chest of drawers anauthentic Charming the Sixth, and the carpet and rugs the best(the early) period of Margery and Robin. There was a chandelierfrom Tiddlywinks for the look of the thing, but of course she litthe residence herself. Tink was very contemptuous of the rest ofthe house, as indeed was perhaps inevitable, and her chamber,though beautiful, looked rather conceited, having the appearanceof a nose permanently turned up.

I suppose it was all especially entrancing to Wendy, becausethose rampagious boys of hers gave her so much to do. Reallythere were whole weeks when, except perhaps with a stocking inthe evening, she was never above ground. The cooking, I can tellyou, kept her nose to the pot, and even if there was nothing in it, even if there was no pot, she had to keep watching that it came aboil just the same. You never exactly knew whether there wouldbe a real meal or just a make-believe, it all depended upon Peter'swhim: he could eat, really eat, if it was part of a game, but hecould not stodge [cram down the food] just to feel stodgy [stuffedwith food], which is what most children like better than anything else;the next best thing being to talk about it. Make-believe was so realto him that during a meal of it you could see him getting rounder. Of course it was trying, but you simply had to follow his lead,and if you could prove to him that you were getting loose for yourtree he let you stodge.

Wendy's favourite time for sewing and darning was after theyhad all gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had abreathing time for herself; and she occupied it in making newthings for them, and putting double pieces on the knees, for theywere all most frightfully hard on their knees.

When she sat down to a basketful of their stockings, every heelwith a hole in it, she would fling up her arms and exclaim, "Ohdear, I am sure I sometimes think spinsters are to be envied!"

Her face beamed when she exclaimed this.

You remember about her pet wolf. Well, it very soon discoveredthat she had come to the island and it found her out, and theyjust ran into each other's arms. After that it followed herabout everywhere.

As time wore on did she think much about the beloved parentsshe had left behind her? This is a difficult question, becauseit is quite impossible to say how time does wear on in theNeverland, where it is calculated by moons and suns, and thereare ever so many more of them than on the mainland. But I amafraid that Wendy did not really worry about her father andmother; she was absolutely confident that they would always keepthe window open for her to fly back by, and this gave hercomplete ease of mind. What did disturb her at times was thatJohn remembered his parents vaguely only, as people he had onceknown, while Michael was quite willing to believe that she wasreally his mother. These things scared her a little, and noblyanxious to do her duty, she tried to fix the old life in theirminds by setting them examination papers on it, as like aspossible to the ones she used to do at school. The other boysthought this awfully interesting, and insisted on joining, andthey made slates for themselves, and sat round the table, writingand thinking hard about the questions she had written on anotherslate and passed round. They were the most ordinary questions --"What was the colour of Mother's eyes? Which was taller, Fatheror Mother? Was Mother blonde or brunette? Answer all threequestions if possible." "(A) Write an essay of not less than 40words on How I spent my last Holidays, or The Characters ofFather and Mother compared. Only one of these to be attempted." Or "(1) Describe Mother's laugh; (2) Describe Father's laugh; (3)Describe Mother's Party Dress; (4) Describe the Kennel and itsInmate."

They were just everyday questions like these, and when youcould not answer them you were told to make a cross; and it wasreally dreadful what a number of crosses even John made. Of coursethe only boy who replied to every question was Slightly, and noone could have been more hopeful of coming out first, but hisanswers were perfectly ridiculous, and he really came out last: a melancholy thing.

Peter did not compete. For one thing he despised all mothersexcept Wendy, and for another he was the only boy on the islandwho could neither write nor spell; not the smallest word. He wasabove all that sort of thing.

By the way, the questions were all written in the past tense. What was the colour of Mother's eyes, and so on. Wendy, you see,had been forgetting, too.

Adventures, of course, as we shall see, were of dailyoccurrence; but about this time Peter invented, with Wendy'shelp, a new game that fascinated him enormously, until hesuddenly had no more interest in it, which, as you have beentold, was what always happened with his games. It consisted inpretending not to have adventures, in doing the sort of thingJohn and Michael had been doing all their lives, sitting onstools flinging balls in the air, pushing each other, going outfor walks and coming back without having killed so much as agrizzly. To see Peter doing nothing on a stool was a greatsight; he could not help looking solemn at such times, to sitstill seemed to him such a comic thing to do. He boasted that hehad gone walking for the good of his health. For several sunsthese were the most novel of all adventures to him; and John andMichael had to pretend to be delighted also; otherwise he wouldhave treated them severely.

He often went out alone, and when he came back you were neverabsolutely certain whether he had had an adventure or not. Hemight have forgotten it so completely that he said nothing aboutit; and then when you went out you found the body; and, on theother hand, he might say a great deal about it, and yet you couldnot find the body. Sometimes he came home with his headbandaged, and then Wendy cooed over him and bathed it in lukewarmwater, while he told a dazzling tale. But she was never quitesure, you know. There were, however, many adventures which sheknew to be true because she was in them herself, and there werestill more that were at least partly true, for the other boyswere in them and said they were wholly true. To describe themall would require a book as large as an English-Latin, Latin-English Dictionary, and the most we can do is to give one as aspecimen of an average hour on the island. The difficulty iswhich one to choose. Should we take the brush with the redskinsat Slightly Gulch? It was a sanguinary [cheerful] affair, andespecially interesting as showing one of Peter's peculiarities,which was that in the middle of a fight he would suddenly changesides. At the Gulch, when victory was still in the balance,sometimes leaning this way and sometimes that, he called out,"I'm redskin to-day; what are you, Tootles?" And Tootlesanswered, "Redskin; what are you, Nibs?" and Nibs said,"Redskin; what are you Twin?" and so on; and they were allredskins; and of course this would have ended the fight had notthe real redskins fascinated by Peter's methods, agreed to belost boys for that once, and so at it they all went again, morefiercely than ever.

The extraordinary upshot of this adventure was -- but we havenot decided yet that this is the adventure we are to narrate. Perhaps a better one would be the night attack by the redskins onthe house under the ground, when several of them stuck in thehollow trees and had to be pulled out like corks. Or we mighttell how Peter saved Tiger Lily's life in the Mermaids' Lagoon,and so made her his ally.

Or we could tell of that cake the pirates cooked so that theboys might eat it and perish; and how they placed it in onecunning spot after another; but always Wendy snatched it from thehands of her children, so that in time it lost its succulence,and became as hard as a stone, and was used as a missile, and Hookfell over it in the dark.

Or suppose we tell of the birds that were Peter's friends,particularly of the Never bird that built in a tree overhangingthe lagoon, and how the nest fell into the water, and still thebird sat on her eggs, and Peter gave orders that she was not tobe disturbed. That is a pretty story, and the end shows howgrateful a bird can be; but if we tell it we must also tell thewhole adventure of the lagoon, which would of course be tellingtwo adventures rather than just one. A shorter adventure, andquite as exciting, was Tinker Bell's attempt, with the help ofsome street fairies, to have the sleeping Wendy conveyed on agreat floating leaf to the mainland. Fortunately the leaf gaveway and Wendy woke, thinking it was bath-time, and swam back. Oragain, we might choose Peter's defiance of the lions, when hedrew a circle round him on the ground with an arrow and daredthem to cross it; and though he waited for hours, with the otherboys and Wendy looking on breathlessly from trees, not one ofthem dared to accept his challenge.

Which of these adventures shall we choose? The best way willbe to toss for it.

I have tossed, and the lagoon has won. This almost makes onewish that the gulch or the cake or Tink's leaf had won. Ofcourse I could do it again, and make it best out of three;however, perhaps fairest to stick to the lagoon.