"Here," cried the boys; "we are the brownies, and we are sorry that we were boggarts so long."
The father was delighted to find how helpful his boys had become. The grandmother, however, could hardly believe that a real brownie had not been in the house. But as she sat in her chair day after day watching the boys at their work, she often repeated her favorite saying, "Children are a blessing."
THE STORY OF PETER PAN
O
NCE upon a time there were three children named Wendy, John, and Michael, who lived with their father and mother in London. One evening the father and mother were invited to a party, and the mother, after lighting the dim lamp in the nursery and kissing them good-night, went away. That evening a little boy climbed in through the window, whose name [page 523] was Peter Pan. He was a curious little fellow, very conceited, very forgetful, and yet very lovable. The most remarkable thing about him was that he never grew up. There came flitting in through the window with him his fairy, whose name was Tinker Bell. Peter Pan woke all the children up, and after he had sprinkled fairy dust on their shoulders, he took them away to the Neverland, where he lived with a family of lost boys. Tinker Bell was jealous of the little girl Wendy, and she hurried ahead of Peter Pan and persuaded the boys that Wendy was a bird who might do them harm, and so one of the boys shot her with his bow and arrow.
When Peter Pan came and found Wendy lying lifeless upon the ground in the woods he was very angry, but he was also very quick-witted. So he told the boys that if they would build a house around Wendy he was sure that she would be better. So they hurried to collect everything they had out of which they could make a house. Though she was not yet strong enough to talk, they thought perhaps she might sing the kind of house she would like to have, so Wendy sang softly this little verse:
"I wish I had a pretty house,
The littlest ever seen,