“John,” Wendy said falteringly, “perhaps we don’t remember the old life as well as we thought we did.”
A chill fell upon them; and serve them right.
“It is very careless of mother,” said that young scoundrel John, “not to be here when we come back.”
It was then that Mrs. Darling began playing again.
“It’s mother!” cried Wendy, peeping.
“So it is!” said John.
“Then are you not really our mother, Wendy?” asked Michael, who was surely sleepy.
“Oh dear!” exclaimed Wendy, with her first real twinge of remorse, “it was quite time we came back.”
“Let us creep in,” John suggested, “and put our hands over her eyes.”
But Wendy, who saw that they must break the joyous news more gently, had a better plan.
“Let us all slip into our beds, and be there when she comes in, just as if we had never been away.”
And so when Mrs. Darling went back to the night-nursery to see if her husband was asleep, all the beds were occupied. The children waited for her cry of joy, but it did not come. She saw them, but she did not believe they were there. You see, she saw them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought this was just the dream hanging around her still.
She sat down in the chair by the fire, where in the old days she had nursed them.
They could not understand this, and a cold fear fell upon all the three of them.
“Mother!” Wendy cried.
“That’s Wendy,” she said, but still she was sure it was the dream.
“Mother!”
“That’s John,” she said.
“Mother!” cried Michael. He knew her now.
“That’s Michael,” she said, and she stretched out her arms for the three little selfish children they would never envelop again. Yes, they did, they went round Wendy and John and Michael, who had slipped out of bed and run to her.
“George, George,” she cried when she could speak; and Mr. Darling woke to share her bliss, and Nana came rushing in. There could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a strange boy who was staring in at the window. He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be forever barred.
XVII
When Wendy Grew Up
I hope you want to know what became of the other boys. They were waiting below to give Wendy time to explain about them; and when they had counted five hundred they went up. They went up by the stair, because they thought this would make a better impression. They stood in a row in front of Mrs. Darling, with their hats off, and wishing they were not wearing their pirate clothes. They said nothing, but their eyes asked her to have them. 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 cipher in his own house.
“I don’t think he is a cipher,” Tootles cried instantly. “Do you think he is a cipher, Curly?”
“No, I don’t. Do you think he is a cipher, Slightly?”
“Rather not. Twin, what do you think?”
It turned out that not one of them thought him a cipher; 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 was what she did.
“Hullo, Wendy, goodbye,” 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 should 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
