Do you pity Peter Pan for making these mistakes? If so, I think it
rather silly of you. What I mean is that, of course, one must pity
him now and then, but to pity him all the time would be impertinence.
He thought he had the most splendid time in the Gardens, and to think
you have it is almost quite as good as really to have it. He played
without ceasing, while you often waste time by being mad-dog or
Mary-Annish. He could be neither of these things, for he had never
heard of them, but do you think he is to be pitied for that?

Oh, he was merry. He was as much merrier than you, for instance, as
you are merrier than your father. Sometimes he fell, like a
spinning-top, from sheer merriment. Have you seen a greyhound leaping
the fences of the Gardens? That is how Peter leaps them.

And think of the music of his pipe. Gentlemen who walk home at night
write to the papers to say they heard a nightingale in the Gardens,
but it is really Peter's pipe they hear. Of course, he had no
mother--at least, what use was she to him? You can be sorry for him
for that, but don't be too sorry, for the next thing I mean to tell
you is how he revisited her. It was the fairies who gave him the
chance.


The Little House

Everybody has heard of the Little House in the Kensington Gardens,
which is the only house in the whole world that the fairies have built
for humans. But no one has really seen it, except just three or four,
and they have not only seen it but slept in it, and unless you sleep
in it you never see it. This is because it is not there when you lie