They ought to have looked at Mr. Darling also, but they forgot about him.
Of course Mrs. Darling said at once that she would have them; but Mr. Darling was curiously depressed, and they saw that he considered six a rather large number.
'I must say,' he said to Wendy, 'that you don't do things by halves,' a grudging remark which the twins thought was pointed at them.
The first twin was the proud one, and he asked, flushing, 'Do you think we should be too much of a handful, sir? Because, if so, we can go away.'
'Father!' Wendy cried, shocked; but still the cloud was on him. He knew he was behaving unworthily, but he could not help it.
'We could lie doubled up,' said Nibs.
'I always cut their hair myself,' said Wendy.
'George!' Mrs. Darling exclaimed, pained to see her dear one showing himself in such an unfavourable light.
Then he burst into tears, and the truth came out. He was as glad to have them as she was, he said, but he thought they should have asked his consent as well as hers, instead of treating him as a cypher [zero] in his own house.
'I don't think he is a cypher,' Tootles cried instantly. 'Do you think he is a cypher, Curly?'
'No, I don't. Do you think he is a cypher, Slightly?'
'Rather not. Twin, what do you think?'
It turned out that not one of them thought him a cypher; and he was absurdly gratified, and said he would find space for them all in the drawing-room if they fitted in.
'We'll fit in, sir,' they assured him.
'Then follow the leader,' he cried gaily. 'Mind you, I am not sure that we have a drawing-room, but we pretend we have, and it's all the same. Hoop la!'
He went off dancing through the house, and they all cried 'Hoop la!' and danced after him, searching for the drawing-room; and I forget whether they found it, but at any rate they found corners, and they all fitted in.
As for Peter, he saw Wendy once again before he flew away. He did not exactly come to the window, but he brushed against it in passing so that she could open it if she liked and call to him. That is what she did.
'Hullo, Wendy, good-bye,' he said.
'Oh dear, are you going away?'
'Yes.'
'You don't feel, Peter,' she said falteringly, 'that you would like to say anything to my parents about a very sweet subject?'
'No.'
'About me, Peter?'
'No.'
Mrs. Darling came to the window, for at present she was keeping a sharp eye on Wendy. She told Peter that she had adopted all the other boys, and would like to adopt him also.
'Would you send me to school?' he inquired craftily.
'Yes.'
'And then to an office?'
'I suppose so.'
'Soon I would be a man?'
'Very soon.'
'I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things,' he told her passionately. 'I don't want to be a man. O Wendy's mother, if I was to wake up and feel there was a beard!'
'Peter,' said Wendy the comforter, 'I should love you in a beard'; and Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her.
'Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man.'
'But where are you going to live?'
'With Tink in the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to put it high up among the tree tops where they sleep at nights.'
'How lovely,' cried Wendy so longingly that Mrs. Darling tightened her grip.
'I thought all the fairies were dead,' Mrs. Darling said.
'There are always a lot of young ones,' explained Wendy, who was now quite an authority, 'because you see when a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are.'
'I shall have such fun,' said Peter, with eye on Wendy.
'It will be rather lonely in the evening,' she said, 'sitting by the fire.'
'I shall have Tink.'
'Tink can't go a twentieth part of the way round,' she reminded him a little tartly.
'Sneaky tell-tale!' Tink called out from somewhere round the corner.
'It doesn't matter,' Peter said.
'O Peter, you know it matters.'
'Well, then, come with me to the little house.'
'May I, mummy?'
'Certainly not. I have got you home again, and I mean to keep you.'
'But he does so need a mother.'
'So do you, my love.'
'Oh, all right,' Peter said, as if he had asked her from politeness merely; but Mrs. Darling saw his mouth twitch, and she made this handsome offer: to let Wendy go to him for a week every year to do his spring cleaning. Wendy would have preferred a more permanent arrangement; and it seemed to her that spring would be long in coming; but this promise sent Peter away quite gay again. He had no sense of time, and was so full of adventures that all I have told you about him is only a halfpenny-worth of them. I suppose it was because Wendy knew this that her last words to him were these rather plaintive ones:
'You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring cleaning time comes?'
Of course Peter promised; and then he flew away. He took Mrs. Darling's kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else, Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemed satisfied.
Of course all the boys went to school; and most of them got into Class III, but Slightly was put first into Class IV and then into Class V. Class I is the top class. Before they had attended school a week they saw what goats they had been not to remain on the island; but it was too late now, and soon they settled down to being as ordinary as you or me or Jenkins minor [the younger Jenkins]. It is sad to have to say that the power to fly gradually left them. At first Nana tied their feet to the bed-posts so that they should not fly away in the night; and one of their diversions by day was to pretend to fall off buses [the English double-deckers]; but by and by they ceased to tug at their bonds in bed, and found that they hurt themselves when they let go of the bus. In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.
Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered at him; so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end of the first year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had woven from leaves and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear was that he might notice how short it had become; but he never noticed, he had so much to say about himself.
She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.
'Who is Captain Hook?' he asked with interest when she spoke of the arch enemy.
'Don't you remember,' she asked, amazed, 'how you killed him and saved all our lives?'
'I forget them after I kill them,' he replied carelessly.
When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her he said, 'Who is Tinker Bell?'
