“She did. She was so crazy to hear a story through that she watched her first chance to make off when the giant guard was asleep.”
“What about the pirate?” asked Mary Frances.
“He is chained to a rock in the Pirate’s Cove, and he spends his time jumping in and out of the water. He has jumped so much and so hard that the suds are rising all around him just as when you blow bubbles in a bowl, holding the pipe down in the water. Poor thing! Some day the suds will rise so high that the bubbles will cover him and smother him.”
“Is there no way for him to save himself?” asked Mary Frances.
“Certainly!” said Peter Pan. “All he has to do is to be good; but he won’t be! He’s just naturally wicked. He’d murder fairies if he could, and he’d steal all the stories in the world, and he’d feed children on charcoal and castor oil—he told me so once. It was after I caught him trying to steal my shadow.”
“He must have a wicked heart!” said Mary Frances.
“Once I asked him why he was so bad,” Peter told her “and what do you think he said?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she returned.
“He said it was because his mother never kissed him.”
“His mother never kissed him!” exclaimed Mary Frances. “Why, what a queer kind of mother! Now my mother——”