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Peter Pan : $b [Peter and Wendy]

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Title: Peter Pan
 [Peter and Wendy]

Author: J. M. Barrie

 
Release date: June 25, 2008 [eBook #16]
 Most recently updated: October 11, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16

Credits: Duncan Research

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER PAN ***

Peter Pan

[PETER AND WENDY]

by J. M. Barrie [James Matthew Barrie]

A Millennium Fulcrum Edition produced in 1991 by Duncan Research. Note
that while a copyright was initially claimed for the labor involved in
digitization, that copyright claim is not consistent with current
copyright requirements. This text, which matches the 1911 original
publication, is in the public domain in the US.

Contents

 Chapter I. PETER BREAKS THROUGH
 Chapter II. THE SHADOW
 Chapter III. COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
 Chapter IV. THE FLIGHT
 Chapter V. THE ISLAND COME TRUE
 Chapter VI. THE LITTLE HOUSE
 Chapter VII. THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
 Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
 Chapter IX. THE NEVER BIRD
 Chapter X. THE HAPPY HOME
 Chapter XI. WENDY'S STORY
 Chapter XII. THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
 Chapter XIII. DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
 Chapter XIV. THE PIRATE SHIP
 Chapter XV. "HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
 Chapter XVI. THE RETURN HOME
 Chapter XVII. WHEN WENDY GREW UP

Chapter I.
PETER BREAKS THROUGH

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow
up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old
she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran
with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather
delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh,
why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed
between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must
grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the
end.

Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the
chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet
mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within
the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover
there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on
it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly
conspicuous in the right-hand corner.

The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been
boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her,
and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who
took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her,
except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and
in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could
have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a
passion, slamming the door.

Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him
but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks
and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know,
and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that
would have made any woman respect him.

Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books
perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a
Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped
out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces.
She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs.
Darling's guesses.

Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would
be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was
frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the
edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses,
while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what
might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece
of paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at
the beginning again.

"Now don't interrupt," he would beg of her.

"I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I can
cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two nine and
six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with five
naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven-who is that
moving?-eight nine seven, dot and carry seven-don't speak, my own-and
the pound you lent to that man who came to the door-quiet, child-dot
and carry child-there, you've done it!-did I say nine nine seven? yes,
I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on
nine nine seven?"

"Of course we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudiced in
Wendy's favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.

"Remember mumps," he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went
again. "Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay it
will be more like thirty shillings-don't speak-measles one five, German
measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six-don't waggle your
finger-whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings"-and so on it went, and it
added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through,
with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated
as one.

There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a
narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the
three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergarten school,
accompanied by their nurse.

Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a
passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had
a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children
drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had
belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She
had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had
become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most
of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by
careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of
to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How
thorough she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of the night if one
of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in the
nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have
no patience with and when it needs stocking around yo

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