Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens | Page 4

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over the houses to the Gardens. It is wonderful that he could fly without
wings, but the place itched tremendously, and, perhaps we could all fly
if we were as dead-confident-sure of our capacity to do it as was bold
Peter Pan that evening.
He alighted gaily on the open sward, between the Baby's Palace and the
Serpentine, and the first thing he did was to lie on his back and kick.
He was quite unaware already that he had ever been human, and
thought he was a bird, even in appearance, just the same as in his early
days, and when he tried to catch a fly he did not understand that the
reason he missed it was because he had attempted to seize it with his
hand, which, of course, a bird never does. He saw, however, that it
must be past Lock-out Time, for there were a good many fairies about,
all too busy to notice him; they were getting breakfast ready, milking
their cows, drawing water, and so on, and the sight of the water-pails
made him thirsty, so he flew over to the Round Pond to have a drink.
He stooped, and dipped his beak in the pond; he thought it was his beak,
but, of course, it was only his nose, and, therefore, very little water
came up, and that not so refreshing as usual, so next he tried a puddle,
and he fell flop into it. When a real bird falls in flop, he spreads out his
feathers and pecks them dry, but Peter could not remember what was
the thing to do, and he decided, rather sulkily, to go to sleep on the
weeping beech in the Baby Walk.
At first he found some difficulty in balancing himself on a branch, but

presently he remembered the way, and fell asleep. He awoke long
before morning, shivering, and saying to himself, "I never was out in
such a cold night;" he had really been out in colder nights when he was
a bird, but, of course, as everybody knows, what seems a warm night to
a bird is a cold night to a boy in a nightgown. Peter also felt strangely
uncomfortable, as if his head was stuffy, he heard loud noises that
made him look round sharply, though they were really himself sneezing.
There was something he wanted very much, but, though he knew he
wanted it, he could not think what it was. What he wanted so much was
his mother to blow his nose, but that never struck him, so he decided to
appeal to the fairies for enlightenment. They are reputed to know a
good deal.
There were two of them strolling along the Baby Walk, with their arms
round each other's waists, and he hopped down to address them. The
fairies have their tiffs with the birds, but they usually give a civil
answer to a civil question, and he was quite angry when these two ran
away the moment they saw him. Another was lolling on a garden-chair,
reading a postage-stamp which some human had let fall, and when he
heard Peter's voice he popped in alarm behind a tulip.
To Peter's bewilderment he discovered that every fairy he met fled
from him. A band of workmen, who were sawing down a toadstool,
rushed away, leaving their tools behind them. A milkmaid turned her
pail upside down and hid in it. Soon the Gardens were in an uproar.
Crowds of fairies were running this way and that, asking each other
stoutly, who was afraid, lights were extinguished, doors barricaded, and
from the grounds of Queen Mab's palace came the rubadub of drums,
showing that the royal guard had been called out.
A regiment of Lancers came charging down the Broad Walk, armed
with holly-leaves, with which they jog the enemy horribly in passing.
Peter heard the little people crying everywhere that there was a human
in the Gardens after Lock-out Time, but he never thought for a moment
that he was the human. He was feeling stuffier and stuffier, and more
and more wistful to learn what he wanted done to his nose, but he
pursued them with the vital question in vain; the timid creatures ran

from him, and even the Lancers, when he approached them up the
Hump, turned swiftly into a side-walk, on the pretence that they saw
him there.
Despairing of the fairies, he resolved to consult the birds, but now he
remembered, as an odd thing, that all the birds on the weeping beech
had flown away when he alighted on it, and though that had not
troubled him at the time, he saw its meaning now. Every living thing
was shunning him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and