o let Wendy go to him for a week every year to do
his spring cleaning. Wendy would have preferred a more permanent
arrangement; and it seemed to her that spring would be long in coming;
but this promise sent Peter away quite gay again. He had no sense of
time, and was so full of adventures that all I have told you about him
is only a halfpenny-worth of them. I suppose it was because Wendy knew
this that her last words to him were these rather plaintive ones:

"You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring cleaning time
comes?"

Of course Peter promised; and then he flew away. He took Mrs. Darling's
kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else, Peter took quite
easily. Funny. But she seemed satisfied.

Of course all the boys went to school; and most of them got into Class
III, but Slightly was put first into Class IV and then into Class V.
Class I is the top class. Before they had attended school a week they
saw what goats they had been not to remain on the island; but it was too
late now, and soon they settled down to being as ordinary as you or me
or Jenkins minor [the younger Jenkins]. It is sad to have to say that
the power to fly gradually left them. At first Nana tied their feet to
the bed-posts so that they should not fly away in the night; and one of
their diversions by day was to pretend to fall off buses [the English
double-deckers]; but by and by they ceased to tug at their bonds in bed,
and found that they hurt themselves when they let go of the bus. In time
they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called
it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.

Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered at him;
so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end of the first
year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had woven from leaves
and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear was that he might notice
how short it had become; but he never noticed, he had so much to say
about himself.

She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but
new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.

"Who is Captain Hook?" he asked with interest when she spoke of the arch
enemy.

"Don't you remember," she asked, amazed, "how you killed him and saved
all our lives?"

"I forget them after I kill them," he replied carelessly.

When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see
her he sai