Page:Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1912, Hodder & Stoughton).djvu/294

 ‘So that is what it is called,’ said Maimie thoughtfully.

‘That’s not my name,’ he explained, ‘my name is Peter Pan.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, ‘I know, everybody knows.’

You can’t think how pleased Peter was to learn that all the people outside the gates knew about him. He begged Maimie to tell him what they knew and what they said, and she did so. They were sitting by this time on a fallen tree; Peter had cleared off the snow for Maimie, but he sat on a snowy bit himself.

‘Squeeze closer,’ Maimie said.

‘What is that?’ he asked, and she showed him, and then he did it. They talked together and he found that people knew a great deal about him, but not everything, not that he had gone back to his mother and been barred out, for instance, and he said nothing of this to Maimie, for it still humiliated him.

‘Do they know that I play games exactly like real boys?’ he asked very proudly. ‘O Maimie, please tell them!’ But when he revealed how he