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 not afraid. So
he stretched out his hand to pull it to him, but this time it ran at
him, and he was so alarmed that he leapt the railing and scudded away
to his boat. You must not think, however, that he was a coward, for
he came back next night with a crust in one hand and a stick in the
other, but the perambulator had gone, and he never saw another one. I
have promised to tell you also about his paddle. It was a child's
spade which he had found near St. Govor's Well, and he thought it was
a paddle.