Peter and Wendy

by J.M. Barrie

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.

“Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.”

His courage was almost appalling. “Do you want an adventure now,” he said casually to John, “or would you like to have your tea first?”

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.

We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter.

“Why, she is only a girl.” “That,” explained Curly, “is why we are her servants.”

In his dark nature there was a touch of the feminine, as in all the great pirates, and it sometimes gave him intuitions.

Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness;

“There are always a lot of young ones,” explained Wendy, who was now quite an authority, “because you see when a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are.”

It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”