“That fiend!" Mr. Darling would cry, and Nana's bark was the echo of it, but Mrs. Darling never upbraided Peter; there was something in the right-hand corner of her mouth that wanted her not to call Peter names.”

J.M. Barrie

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“Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery too late. The birds were flown”


“You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring-cleaning time comes?Of course Peter promised, and then he flew away. He took Mrs. Darling's kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemd satisfied.”


“Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse.”


“What’s your name?’ he asked.‘Wendy Moira Angela Darling,’ she replied with some satisfaction. ‘What is your name?’‘Peter Pan.’She was already sure that he must be Peter, but it did seem a comparatively short name.‘Is that all?’‘Yes,’ he said rather sharply. He felt for the first time that it was a shortish name.‘I’m so sorry,’ said Wendy Moira Angela.‘It doesn’t matter,’ Peter gulped.She asked where he lived.‘Second to the right,’ said Peter, ‘and then straight on till morning.’‘What a funny address!’Peter had a sinking feeling. For the first time he felt that perhaps it was a funny address.“A moment after the fairy’s entrance the window was blow open by the breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in.”


“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 it 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.”


“And so when Mrs. Darling went back to the night-nursery to see if her husband was asleep, all the beds were occupied. The children waited for her cry of joy, but it did not come. She saw them, but she did not believe they were there. You see, she saw them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought this was just the dream hanging around her still.”