YOYO'S NEVERLAND

                              Chapter 1

                        PETER BREAKS THROUGH

  All children, except one, grow up.  They soon know that they will

grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this.  One day when she was two

years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower

and ran with it to her mother.  I suppose she must have looked rather

delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried,

"Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!"  This was all that

passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that

she must grow up.  You always know after you are two.  Two is the

beginning of the end.

  Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street],

and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one.  She was a lovely lady,

with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth.  Her romantic mind

was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the

puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and

her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get,

though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.

  The way Mr. Darling won her was this:  the many gentlemen who

had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that

they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her

except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he

got her.  He got all of her, except the innermost box and the

kiss.  He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying

for the kiss.  Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I

can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming

the door.

  Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only

loved him but respected him.  He was one of those deep ones who

know about stocks and shares.  Of course no one really knows,

but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and

shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect

him.

  Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the

books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so

much as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole

cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures

of babies without faces.  She drew them when she should have been

totting up.  They were Mrs. Darling's guesses.