Maimie'

PETER PAN

IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

[Illustration: Map of Peter Pan's Kensington Gardens]

I

THE GRAND TOUR OF THE GARDENS

[Illustration: David]

You must see for yourselves that it will be difficult to follow Peter
Pan's adventures unless you are familiar with the Kensington Gardens.
They are in London, where the King lives, and I used to take David
there nearly every day unless he was looking decidedly flushed. No
child has ever been in the whole of the Gardens, because it is so soon
time to turn back. The reason it is soon time to turn back is that, if
you are as small as David, you sleep from twelve to one. If your
mother was not so sure that you sleep from twelve to one, you could
most likely see the whole of them.

[Illustration: Nurse]

The Gardens are bounded on one side by a never-ending line of
omnibuses, over which your nurse has such authority that if she holds
up her finger to any one of them it stops immediately. She then
crosses with you in safety to the other side. There are more gates to
the Gardens than one gate, but that is the one you go in at, and before
you go in you speak to the lady with the balloons, who sits just
outside. This is as near to being inside as she may venture, because,
if she were to let go her hold of the railings for one moment, the
balloons would lift her up, and she would be flown away. She sits very
squat, for the balloons are always tugging at her, and the strain has
given her quite a red face. Once she was a new one, because the old
one had let go, and David was very sorry for the old one, but as she
did let go, he wished he had been there to see.

[Illustration: _The lady with the balloons, who sits just outside._]

The Gardens are a tremendous big place, with millions and hundreds of
trees; and first you come to the Figs, but you scorn to loiter there,
for the Figs is the resort of superior little persons, who are
forbidden to mix with the commonalty, and is so named, according to
legend, because they dress in full fig. These dainty ones are
themselves contemptuously called Figs by David and other heroes, and
you have a key to the manners and customs of this dandiacal section of
the Gardens when I tell you that cricket is called crickets here.
Occasionally a rebel Fig climbs over the fence into the world, and such
a one was Miss Mabel Grey, of whom I shall tell you when we come to
Miss Mabel Grey's gate. She was the only really