it. But, like all the most wonderful things that happen in the Gardens,
it is done, we concluded, at night after the gates are closed. We have
also decided that the paths make themselves because it is their only
chance of getting to the Round Pond.

One of these gypsy paths comes from the place where the sheep get their
hair cut. When David shed his curls at the hair-dresser's, I am told, he
said good-bye to them without a tremor, though Mary has never been quite
the same bright creature since, so he despises the sheep as they run
from their shearer and calls out tauntingly, "Cowardy, cowardy custard!"
But when the man grips them between his legs David shakes a fist at him
for using such big scissors. Another startling moment is when the man
turns back the grimy wool from the sheeps' shoulders and they look
suddenly like ladies in the stalls of a theatre. The sheep are so
frightened by the shearing that it makes them quite white and thin, and
as soon as they are set free they begin to nibble the grass at once,
quite anxiously, as if they feared that they would never be worth
eating. David wonders whether they know each other, now that they are
so different, and if it makes them fight with the wrong ones. They are
great fighters, and thus so unlike country sheep that every year they
give Porthos a shock. He can make a field of country sheep fly by merely
announcing his approach, but these town sheep come toward him with no
promise of gentle entertainment, and then a light from last year breaks
upon Porthos. He cannot with dignity retreat, but he stops and looks
about him as if lost in admiration of the scenery, and presently he
strolls away with a fine indifference and a glint at me from the corner
of his eye.

The Serpentine begins near here. It is a lovely lake, and there is a
drowned forest at the bottom of it. If you peer over the edge you can
see the trees all growing upside down, and they say that at night there
are also drowned stars in it. If so, Peter Pan sees them when he is
sailing across the lake in the Thrush's Nest. A small part only of the
Serpentine is in the Gardens, for soon it passes beneath a bridge to
far away where the island is on which all the birds are born that become
baby boys and girls. No one who is human, except Peter Pan (and he is
only half human), can land on the island, but you may write what you
want (boy or girl, dark or fair) on a piece of paper, and then twist
it into the shape of