needed an
instrument, so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to sit by the shore
of the island of an evening, practising the sough of the wind and the
ripple of the water, and catching handfuls of the shine of the moon,
and he put them all in his pipe and played them so beautifully that
even the birds were deceived, and they would say to each other, 'Was
that a fish leaping in the water or was it Peter playing leaping fish
on his pipe?' And sometimes he played the birth of birds, and then the
mothers would turn round in their nests to see whether they had laid an
egg. If you are a child of the Gardens you must know the chestnut-tree
near the bridge, which comes out in flower first of all the chestnuts,
but perhaps you have not heard why this tree leads the way. It is
because Peter wearies for summer and plays that it has come, and the
chestnut being so near, hears him and is cheated.

[Illustration: A hundred flew off with the string, and Peter clung to
the tail]

But as Peter sat by the shore tootling divinely on his pipe he
sometimes fell into sad thoughts, and then the music became sad also,
and the reason of all this sadness was that he could not reach the
Gardens, though he could see them through the arch of the bridge. He
knew he could never be a real human again, and scarcely wanted to be
one, but oh! how he longed to play as other children play, and of
course there is no such lovely place to play in as the Gardens. The
birds brought him news of how boys and girls play, and wistful tears
started in Peter's eyes.

Perhaps you wonder why he did not swim across. The reason was that he
could not swim. He wanted to know how to swim, but no one on the
island knew the way except the ducks, and they are so stupid. They
were quite willing to teach him, but all they could say about it was,
'You sit down on the top of the water in this way, and then you kick
out like that.' Peter tried it often, but always before he could kick
out he sank. What he really needed to know was how you sit on the
water without sinking, and they said it was quite impossible to explain
such an easy thing as that. Occasionally swans touched on the island,
and he would give them all his day's food and then ask them how they
sat on the water, but as soon as he had no more to give them the
hateful things hissed at him and sailed away.

Once he really thought he had discovered a way of reaching the Gardens.
A wonderful white thing, lik