rents about a very sweet subject?'

'No.'

'About me, Peter?'

'No.'

Mrs. Darling came to the window, for at present she was keeping a sharp
eye on Wendy. She told Peter that she had adopted all the other boys,
and would like to adopt him also.

'Would you send me to school?' he inquired craftily.

'Yes.'

'And then to an office?'

'I suppose so.'

'Soon I should be a man?'

'Very soon.'

'I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things,' he told her
passionately. 'I don't want to be a man. O Wendy's mother, if I was to
wake up and feel there was a beard!'

'Peter,' said Wendy the comforter, 'I should love you in a beard'; and
Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her.

'Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man.'

'But where are you going to live?'

'With Tink in the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to put it
high up among the tree tops where they sleep at nights.'

'How lovely,' cried Wendy so longingly that Mrs. Darling tightened her
grip.

'I thought all the fairies were dead,' Mrs. Darling said.

'There are always a lot of young ones,' explained Wendy, who was now
quite an authority, 'because you see when a new baby laughs for the
first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there
are always new fairies. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the
mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are
just little sillies who are not sure what they are.'

'I shall have such fun,' said Peter, with one eye on Wendy.

'It will be rather lonely in the evening,' she said, 'sitting by the
fire.'

'I shall have Tink.'

'Tink can't go a twentieth part of the way round,' she reminded him a
little tartly.

'Sneaky tell-tale!' Tink called out from somewhere round the corner.

'It doesn't matter,' Peter said.

'O Peter, you know it matters.'

'Well, then, come with me to the little house.'

'May I, mummy?'

'Certainly not. I have got you home again, and I mean to keep you.'

'But he does so need a mother.'

'So do you, my love.'

'Oh, all right,' Peter said, as if he had asked her from politeness
merely; but Mrs. Darling saw his mouth twitch, and she made this
handsome offer: to let Wendy go to him for a week every year to do his
spring cleaning. Wendy would have preferred a more permanent
arrangement; and it seemed to her that spring would be long in coming;
but this promise sent Pet