Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens | Page 6

that whatever he was doing was a
thing of vast importance. Peter became very clever at helping the birds
to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and
nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches,
and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms
for the young ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in
bird-lore, and knew an east-wind from a west-wind by its smell, and he
could see the grass growing and hear the insects walking about inside
the tree-trunks. But the best thing Solomon had done was to teach him
to have a glad heart. All birds have glad hearts unless you rob their
nests, and so as they were the only kind of heart Solomon knew about,
it was easy to him to teach Peter how to have one.
Peter's heart was so glad that he felt he must sing all day long, just as
the birds sing for joy, but, being partly human, he needed in instrument,
so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to sit by the shore of the island
of an evening, practising the sough of the wind and the ripple of the

water, and catching handfuls of the shine of the moon, and he put them
all in his pipe and played them so beautifully that even the birds were
deceived, and they would say to each other, "Was that a fish leaping in
the water or was it Peter playing leaping fish on his pipe?" and
sometimes he played the birth of birds, and then the mothers would
turn round in their nests to see whether they had laid an egg. If you are
a child of the Gardens you must know the chestnut-tree near the bridge,
which comes out in flower first of all the chestnuts, but perhaps you
have not heard why this tree leads the way. It is because Peter wearies
for summer and plays that it has come, and the chestnut being so near,
hears him and is cheated.
But as Peter sat by the shore tootling divinely on his pipe he sometimes
fell into sad thoughts and then the music became sad also, and the
reason of all this sadness was that he could not reach the Gardens,
though he could see them through the arch of the bridge. He knew he
could never be a real human again, and scarcely wanted to be one, but
oh, how he longed to play as other children play, and of course there is
no such lovely place to play in as the Gardens. The birds brought him
news of how boys and girls play, and wistful tears started in Peter's
eyes.
Perhaps you wonder why he did not swim across. The reason was that
he could not swim. He wanted to know how to swim, but no one on the
island knew the way except the ducks, and they are so stupid. They
were quite willing to teach him, but all they could say about it was,
"You sit down on the top of the water in this way, and then you kick
out like that." Peter tried it often, but always before he could kick out
he sank. What he really needed to know was how you sit on the water
without sinking, and they said it was quite impossible to explain such
an easy thing as that. Occasionally swans touched on the island, and he
would give them all his day's food and then ask them how they sat on
the water, but as soon as he had no more to give them the hateful things
hissed at him and sailed away.
Once he really thought he had discovered a way of reaching the
Gardens. A wonderful white thing, like a runaway newspaper, floated

high over the island and then tumbled, rolling over and over after the
manner of a bird that has broken its wing. Peter was so frightened that
he hid, but the birds told him it was only a kite, and what a kite is, and
that it must have tugged its string out of a boy's hand, and soared away.
After that they laughed at Peter for being so fond of the kite, he loved it
so much that he even slept with one hand on it, and I think this was
pathetic and pretty, for the reason he loved it was because it had
belonged to a real boy.
To the birds this was a very poor reason, but the older ones felt grateful
to him at this time because he had nursed a number of fledglings
through the German measles, and they offered to show him how birds
fly a kite. So