Peter Pan

Ebook Excerpt Chapter One:

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up,

and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was

playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her

mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put

her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!”

This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy

knew that 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.