m to have a glad
heart. All birds have glad hearts unless you rob their nests, and so as
they were the only kind of heart Solomon knew about, it was easy to him
to teach Peter how to have one.

Peter's heart was so glad that he felt he must sing all day long,
just as the birds sing for joy, but, being partly human, he needed an
instrument, so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to sit by the shore
of the island of an evening, practising the sough of the wind and the
ripple of the water, and catching handfuls of the shine of the moon, and
he put them all in his pipe and played them so beautifully that even the
birds were deceived, and they would say to each other, "Was that a fish
leaping in the water or was it Peter playing leaping fish on his pipe?"
and sometimes he played the birth of birds, and then the mothers would
turn round in their nests to see whether they had laid an egg. If you
are a child of the Gardens you must know the chestnut-tree near the
bridge, which comes out in flower first of all the chestnuts, but
perhaps you have not heard why this tree leads the way. It is because
Peter wearies for summer and plays that it has come, and the chestnut
being so near, hears him and is cheated.

But as Peter sat by the shore tootling divinely on his pipe he sometimes
fell into sad thoughts and then the music became sad also, and the
reason of all this sadness was that he could not reach the Gardens,
though he could see them through the arch of the bridge. He knew he
could never be a real human again, and scarcely wanted to be one, but
oh, how he longed to play as other children play, and of course there
is no such lovely place to play in as the Gardens. The birds brought him
news of how boys and girls play, and wistful tears started in Peter's
eyes.

Perhaps you wonder why he did not swim across. The reason was that he
could not swim. He wanted to know how to swim, but no one on the island
knew the way except the ducks, and they are so stupid. They were quite
willing to teach him, but all they could say about it was, "You sit down
on the top of the water in this way, and then you kick out like that."
Peter tried it often, but always before he could kick out he sank. What
he really needed to know was how you sit on the water without sinking,
and they said it was quite impossible to explain such an easy thing as
that. Occasionally swans touched on the island, and he would give them
all his day's food and then ask t