What is it, Peter? she cried, running to him, thinking he was ill.
She felt him solicitously, lower down than his chest. Where is it,
Peter?
It isn t that kind of pain, Peter replied darkly.
Then what kind is it?
Wendy, you are wrong about mothers.
They all gathered round him in affright, so alarming was his agitation;
and with a fine candour he told them what he had hitherto concealed.
Long ago, he said, I thought like you that my mother would always
keep the window open for me, so I stayed away for moons and moons and
moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred, for mother had
forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my
bed.
I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true; and it
scared them.
Are you sure mothers are like that?
Yes.
So this was the truth about mothers. The toads!
Still it is best to be careful; and no one knows so quickly as a child
when he should give in. Wendy, let us go home, cried John and Michael
together.
Yes, she said, clutching them.
Not to-night? asked the lost boys bewildered. They knew in what they
called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother,
and that it is only the mothers who think you can t.
At once, Wendy replied resolutely, for the horrible thought had come
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