'Whatever do you mean, Wendy?'

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

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

'What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the house 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 the window.

Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so natural to
Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she had been dreaming.

'My child,' the mother cried, 'why did you not tell me of this before?'

'I forgot,' said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her breakfast.

Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling examined
them carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not
come from any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the floor,
peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She rattled the
poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down a tape from the
window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without
so much as 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 children may be
said to have begun.

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

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

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

While she slept she had a dream. She drea