d on
joining, and they made slates for themselves, and sat round the table,
writing and thinking hard about the questions she had written on another
slate and passed round. They were the most ordinary questions--'What was
the colour of Mother's eyes? Which was taller, Father or Mother? Was
Mother blonde or brunette? Answer all three questions if possible.' '(A)
Write an essay of not less than 40 words on How I spent my last
Holidays, or The Caracters of Father 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 its Inmate.'

They were just everyday questions like these, and when you could not
answer them you were told to make a cross; and it was really dreadful
what a number of crosses even John made. Of course the only boy who
replied to every question was Slightly, and no one could have been more
hopeful of coming out first, but his answers were perfectly ridiculous,
and he really came out last: a melancholy thing.

Peter did not compete. For one thing he despised all mothers except
Wendy, and for another he was the only boy on the island who could
neither write nor spell; not the smallest word. He was above 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 daily occurrence; but
about this time Peter invented, with Wendy's help, a new game that
fascinated him enormously, until he suddenly had no more interest in it,
which, as you have been told, was what always happened with his games.
It consisted in pretending not to have adventures, in doing the sort of
thing John and Michael had been doing all their lives: sitting on
stools flinging balls in the air, pushing each other, going out for
walks and coming back without having killed so much as a grizzly. To see
Peter doing nothing on a stool was a great sight; he could not help
looking solemn at such times, to sit still seemed to him such a comic
thing to do. He boasted that he had gone a walk for the good of his
health. For several suns these were the most novel of all adventures to
him; and John and Michael had to pretend to be delighted also; otherwise
he would have treated them severely.

He often went out alone, and when he came back you were never absolutely