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"My child," the mother cried, "why did you not tell me of this before?"

"I forgot," said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her breakfast.

Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

But, on the other hand, there were the leaves.

Mrs. Darling examined them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England.

She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot.

She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls.

She let down a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.

Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.

But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed, the night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be said to have begun.

On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed. It happened to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling had bathed them and sung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid away into the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.

It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting into shirts.

The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by three night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling's lap.

Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully.

She was asleep.

Look at the four of them, Wendy and Michael over there, John here, and Mrs. Darling by the fire.

There should have been a fourth night-light.

While she slept she had a dream.

She dreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it.

He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children.

Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.

But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping through the gap.

The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on the floor.

He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your fist, which darted about the room like a living thing and I think it must have been this light that wakened Mrs. Darling.

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