Peter and Wendy - (Illustrated): The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up

by J.M. Barrie

'That's right,' he shouted. 'Coddle her! Nobody coddles me. Oh dear no! I am only the breadwinner, why should I be coddled, why, why, why!'

'Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?' 'Nothing, precious,' she said; 'they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.'

Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder. They are not really friendly to Peter, who has a mischievous way of stealing up behind them and trying to blow them out; but they are so fond of fun that they were on his side to-night, and anxious to get the grown-ups out of the way.

'You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.'

Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars.'

Peter, you see, just said anything that came into his head.

Tink was not all bad: or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.

Wendy was crying, for it was the first tragedy she had seen. Peter had seen many tragedies, but he had forgotten them all.

Peter would not budge. He was tingling with life and also top-heavy with conceit.

Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, 'To die will be an awfully big adventure.'

He was often thus when communing with himself on board ship in the quietude of the night. It was because he was so terribly alone. This inscrutable man never felt more alone than when surrounded by his dogs. They were socially so inferior to him.

for, like all slaves to a fixed idea, it was a stupid beast.

They had done for his dogs, but this man alone seemed to be a match for them all.

James Hook.

'Don't be silly; what do I matter? Do go back and keep an eye on the children.' So long as mothers are like this their children will take advantage of them; and they may lay to that.