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 birds 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 having a game by itself, and he caught it after an exciting
chase. But he thought it was a ball, and Jenny Wren had told him that
boys kick balls, so he kicked it; and after that he could not find it
anywhere.

Perhaps the most surprising thing he found was a perambulator. It was
under a lime-tree, near the entrance to the Fairy Queen's Winter Palace
(which is within the circle of the seven Spanish chestnuts), and Peter
approached it warily, for the birds had never mentioned such things to
him. Lest it was alive, he addressed it politely, and then, as it gave
no answer, he went nearer and felt it cautiously. He gave it a little
push, and it ran from him, which made him think it must be alive after
all; but, as it had run from him, he was n