8
"
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.
