Peter Pan in Scarlet Read Online Free PDF Page A

Virginia creeper and maple.
    ‘Now now, Peter,’ said Wendy, stepping into the breach. ‘Is that any way to greet your old friends?’
    ‘ I have no friends who are old! ’ cried the boy with the drawn sword. ‘I am Boy and if things are big, I cut ’em down to size!’
    Seeing that Peter did not recognize her, tears pricked behind Wendy’s eyes, but she too tipped back her head. ‘Don’t be so silly,’ she said briskly. ‘You are Peter and I am Wendy, and we have come …’—she racked her brains trying to remember—‘in case you were in trouble.’
    Peter looked at her, baffled. ‘How “in trouble”? In a cooking pot with cannibals waiting to eat me, you mean?’
    ‘Well, maybe not that exactly …’
    ‘Fallen off a ship in shark-infested waters?’
    ‘Possibly not, but …’
    ‘Being carried through the sky by a giant mother eagle to her eyrie to feed her hungry chicks?’ It was plain Peter rather liked the idea of being in trouble. It was equally plain that none of these things were happening to him. Wendy began to feel rather foolish, which was something she never enjoyed.
    ‘Have you been saying your prayers?’ she demanded (a question every bit as scary as a sword waved in your face).
    ‘Well, I haven’t been saying anyone else’s!’ retorted Peter.
    Then, for the first time, he looked at them properly. His sword-tip wavered and a great smile lit up his face. ‘Ah. You’ve come back, then, have you? I thought I was dreaming you. I have dreamt you a lot, lately.’ He added accusingly, ‘You were much too big .’
    The Twins hastily put back the wall, proving that they were not too big still to fit inside the Wendy House. ‘How lucky you are, Peter! It must be first rate to live in the treetops! Did the fairies carry the house up here for you?’
    ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Peter. ‘They wouldn’t, the idle little brutes. They told people they had, but I did it all by myself!’ (In actual fact, to set the records straight, it was the Nevertree that did it. Peter had not troubled to cut the Nevertree level with the floor each morning. So it had simply grown and grown—clear up through the underground den and into the sunlight. One of its branches had scooped up the nearby Wendy House, lifting it higher than any other tree in the wood.) ‘Why did you say you had come?’
    ‘To do the Spring Cleaning, of course!’ said Wendy, which was much simpler than explaining.
    Carelessly Peter flung his sword into a corner. ‘You can clean out the nightmares if you like,’ he said.
    Wendy was not exactly sure what Peter’s nightmares looked like, so she swept down the black cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. ‘There! They are all gone now,’ she said, and added breezily: ‘We have been having nightmares, too. About Neverland. We thought something might be wrong.’
    But either Peter did not know or he did not care about the dreams leaking out of Neverland: Neverland had dreams a-plenty to spare.
    ‘Things outside look very … different ,’ said Wendy carefully.
    But of course Peter loved Neverland in scarlet and gold just as much as in summer greens, so he saw nothing wrong in that. Wendy did not press him. Perhaps she had been mistaken, and nothing was wrong.
    ‘Are you quite well, Chief?’ said Tootles tenderly, feeling Peter’s pulse and the temperature of his forehead. ‘If you are not, we can play doctors and nurses!’
    ‘I am dying!’ exclaimed Peter, throwing an arm across his face.
    Wendy gave a cry of distress: ‘Oh, I knew it! I knew something was wrong! I do hope you are not!’
    ‘I am dying of boredom!’ groaned Peter. Then he changed his mind and sprang to his feet. ‘But now I have imagined you here, we can have the best adventures in the world!’ And he uttered a triumphant crow that was thrilling and chilling and ear-splitting, all three:

    And then he forgot they had ever been away. He did not notice that Tootles had become a girl or that Slightly