confidently. "Mother
always keeps it open in the hope that I may fly back."

"How do you know?" they asked, quite surprised, and, really, Peter could
not explain how he knew.

"I just do know," he said.

So as he persisted in his wish, they had to grant it. The way they gave
him power to fly was this: They all tickled him on the shoulder, and
soon he felt a funny itching in that part and then up he rose higher and
higher and flew away out of the Gardens and over the house-tops.

It was so delicious that instead of flying straight to his old home he
skimmed away over St. Paul's to the Crystal Palace and back by the river
and Regent's Park, and by the time he reached his mother's window he had
quite made up his mind that his second wish should be to become a bird.

The window was wide open, just as he knew it would be, and in he
fluttered, and there was his mother lying asleep. Peter alighted softly
on the wooden rail at the foot of the bed and had a good look at her.
She lay with her head on her hand, and the hollow in the pillow was like
a nest lined with her brown wavy hair. He remembered, though he had
long forgotten it, that she always gave her hair a holiday at night. How
sweet the frills of her night-gown were. He was very glad she was such a
pretty mother.

But she looked sad, and he knew why she looked sad. One of her arms
moved as if it wanted to go round something, and he knew what it wanted
to go round.

"Oh, mother," said Peter to himself, "if you just knew who is sitting on
the rail at the foot of the bed."

Very gently he patted the little mound that her feet made, and he could
see by her face that she liked it. He knew he had but to say "Mother"
ever so softly, and she would wake up. They always wake up at once if it
is you that says their name. Then she would give such a joyous cry
and squeeze him tight. How nice that would be to him, but oh, how
exquisitely delicious it would be to her. That I am afraid is how Peter
regarded it. In returning to his mother he never doubted that he was
giving her the greatest treat a woman can have. Nothing can be more
splendid, he thought, than to have a little boy of your own. How proud
of him they are; and very right and proper, too.

But why does Peter sit so long on the rail, why does he not tell his
mother that he has come back?

I quite shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two minds.
Sometimes he looked longingly at his mother, and somet