ad danced with joy, just as the real Mrs. Darling must have done.

Then John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived due to the
birth of a male, and Michael came from his bath to ask to be born also,
but John said brutally that they did not want any more.

Michael had nearly cried. "Nobody wants me," he said, and of course the
lady in the evening-dress could not stand that.

"I do," she said, "I so want a third child."

"Boy or girl?" asked Michael, not too hopefully.

"Boy."

Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr. and Mrs.
Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if that was to be
Michael's last night in the nursery.

They go on with their recollections.

"It was then that I rushed in like a tornado, wasn't it?" Mr. Darling
would say, scorning himself; and indeed he had been like a tornado.

Perhaps there was some excuse for him. He, too, had been dressing for
the party, and all had gone well with him until he came to his tie. It
is an astounding thing to have to tell, but this man, though he knew
about stocks and shares, had no real mastery of his tie. Sometimes the
thing yielded to him without a contest, but there were occasions when it
would have been better for the house if he had swallowed his pride and
used a made-up tie.

This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery with the
crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand.

"Why, what is the matter, father dear?"

"Matter!" he yelled; he really yelled. "This tie, it will not tie." He
became dangerously sarcastic. "Not round my neck! Round the bed-post!
Oh yes, twenty times have I made it up round the bed-post, but round my
neck, no! Oh dear no! begs to be excused!"

He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he went on
sternly, "I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie is round my
neck we don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I don't go out to dinner
to-night, I never go to the office again, and if I don't go to the
office again, you and I starve, and our children will be flung into the
streets."

Even then Mrs. Darling was placid. "Let me try, dear," she said, and
indeed that was what he had come to ask her to do, and with her nice
cool hands she tied his tie for him, while the children stood around to
see their fate decided. Some men would have resented her being able to
do it so easily, but Mr. Darling had far too fine a nature for that; he
thanked her carelessly, at