she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the
beginning of the end.

Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street],
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