[Illustration: Old Mr. Salford was a crab-apple of an old gentleman who
wandered all day in the Gardens]

[Illustration: Away he flew, right over the houses to the Gardens]

The two last places before you come to our gate are the Dogs' Cemetery
and the chaffinch's nest, but we pretend not to know what the Dogs'
Cemetery is, as Porthos is always with us. The nest is very sad. It
is quite white, and the way we found it was wonderful. We were having
another look among the bushes for David's lost worsted ball, and
instead of the ball we found a lovely nest made of the worsted, and
containing four eggs, with scratches on them very like David's
handwriting, so we think they must have been the mother's love-letters
to the little ones inside. Every day we were in the Gardens we paid a
call at the nest, taking care that no cruel boy should see us, and we
dropped crumbs, and soon the bird knew us as friends, and sat in the
nest looking at us kindly with her shoulders hunched up. But one day
when we went there were only two eggs in the nest, and the next time
there were none. The saddest part of it was that the poor little
chaffinch fluttered about the bushes, looking so reproachfully at us
that we knew she thought we had done it; and though David tried to
explain to her, it was so long since he had spoken the bird language
that I fear she did not understand. He and I left the Gardens that day
with our knuckles in our eyes.

[Illustration: Tailpiece to 'The Grand Tour of the Gardens']

[Illustration: Headpiece to 'Peter Pan']

II

PETER PAN

If you ask your mother whether she knew about Peter Pan when she was a
little girl, she will say, 'Why, of course I did, child'; and if you
ask her whether he rode on a goat in those days, she will say, 'What a
foolish question to ask; certainly he did.' Then if you ask your
grandmother whether she knew about Peter Pan when she was a girl, she
also says, 'Why, of course I did, child,' but if you ask her whether he
rode on a goat in those days, she says she never heard of his having a
goat. Perhaps she has forgotten, just as she sometimes forgets your
name and calls you Mildred, which is your mother's name. Still, she
could hardly forget such an important thing as the goat. Therefore
there was no goat when your grandmother was a little girl. This shows
that, in telling the story of Peter Pan, to begin with the goat (as
most people do) is as silly as to put on you