Peter Pan

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendyknew was this.

One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she pluckedanother flower and ran with it to her mother.

I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, forMrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" Thiswas all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must growup.

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 motherwas 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 kisson it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-handcorner.The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was agirl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to herexcept Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her.

He got all of her, exceptthe innermost box and the kiss.

He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for thekiss.

Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off ina passion, slamming the door.Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him.

Hewas one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares.

Of course no one really knows, buthe quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way thatwould have made any woman respect him.Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as ifit were a game, not so much as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowersdropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces.

She drew them whenshe should have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling's guesses.Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.