hem 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, like a runaway newspaper, floated high over
the island and then tumbled, rolling over and over 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 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.

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

XV. 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