on whose intelligence
they set great store, and they led him civilly to their queen, who
conferred upon him the courtesy of the Gardens after Lock-out Time, and
henceforth Peter could go whither he chose, and the fairies had orders
to put him in comfort.

Such was his first voyage to the Gardens, and you may gather from the
antiquity of the language that it took place a long time ago. But Peter
never grows any older, and if we could be watching for him under the
bridge to-night (but, of course, we can't), I daresay we should see
him hoisting his night-gown and sailing or paddling toward us in the
Thrush's Nest. When he sails, he sits down, but he stands up to paddle.
I shall tell you presently how he got his paddle.

Long before the time for the opening of the gates comes he steals back
to the island, for people must not see him (he is not so human as all
that), but this gives him hours for play, and he plays exactly as real
children play. At least he thinks so, and it is one of the pathetic
things about him that he often plays quite wrongly.

You see, he had no one to tell him how children really play, for the
fairies were all more or less in hiding until dusk, and so know nothing,
and though the buds pretended that they could tell him a great deal,
when the time for telling came, it was wonderful how little they really
knew. They told him the truth about hide-and-seek, and he often plays
it by himself, but even the ducks on the Round Pond could not explain to
him what it is that makes the pond so fascinating to boys. Every night
the ducks have forgotten all the events of the day, except the number of
pieces of cake thrown to them. They are gloomy creatures, and say that
cake is not what it was in their young days.

So Peter had to find out many things for himself. He often played ships
at the Round Pond, but his ship was only a hoop which he had found on
the grass. Of course, he had never seen a hoop, and he wondered what
you play at with them, and decided that you play at pretending they
are boats. This hoop always sank at once, but he waded in for it, and
sometimes he dragged it gleefully round the rim of the pond, and he was
quite proud to think that he had discovered what boys do with hoops.

Another time, when he found a child's pail, he thought it was for
sitting in, and he sat so hard in it that he could scarcely get out of
it. Also he found a balloon. It was bobbing about on the Hump, quite as
if it was h