er after the manner of
a bird that has broken its wing. Peter was so frightened that he hid,
but the birds told him it was only a kite, and what a kite is, and that
it must have tugged its string out of a boy's hand, and soared away.
After that they laughed at Peter for being so fond of the kite; he
loved it so much that he even slept with one hand on it, and I think
this was pathetic and pretty, for the reason he loved it was because it
had belonged to a real boy.

To the birds this was a very poor reason, but the older ones felt
grateful to him at this time because he had nursed a number of
fledglings through the German measles, and they offered to show him how
birds fly a kite. So six of them took the end of the string in their
beaks and flew away with it; and to his amazement it flew after them
and went even higher than they.

Peter screamed out, 'Do it again!' and with great good-nature they did
it several times, and always instead of thanking them he cried, 'Do it
again!' which shows that even now he had not quite forgotten what it
was to be a boy.

At last, with a grand design burning within his brave heart, he begged
them to do it once more with him clinging to the tail, and now a
hundred flew off with the string, and Peter clung to the tail, meaning
to drop off when he was over the Gardens. But the kite broke to pieces
in the air, and he would have been drowned in the Serpentine had he not
caught hold of two indignant swans and made them carry him to the
island. After this the birds said that they would help him no more in
his mad enterprise.

[Illustration: _After this the birds said that they would help him no
more in his mad enterprise._]

Nevertheless, Peter did reach the Gardens at last by the help of
Shelley's boat, as I am now to tell you.

III

THE THRUSH'S NEST

Shelley was a young gentleman and as grown-up as he need ever expect to
be. He was a poet; and they are never exactly grown-up. They are
people who despise money except what you need for to-day, and he had
all that and five pounds over. So, when he was walking in the
Kensington Gardens, he made a paper boat of his bank-note, and sent it
sailing on the Serpentine.

It reached the island at night; and the look-out brought it to Solomon
Caw, who thought at first that it was the usual thing, a message from a
lady, saying she would be obliged if he could let her have a good one.
They always ask for the best one he has, and