for she hears the signal (which is the crow of a cock) and slips through their arms into the water. It has been such a near thing that there are scales on some of their hands. They climb on to the rock crestfallen.
WENDY (preserving her scales as carefully as if they were rare postage stamps). I did so want to catch a mermaid.
PETER (getting rid of his). It is awfully difficult to catch a mermaid.
(The mermaids at times find it just as difficult to catch him, though he sometimes joins them in their one game, which consists in lazily blowing their bubbles into the air and seeing who can catch them. The number of bubbles PETER has flown away with! When the weather grows cold mermaids migrate to the other side of the world, and he once went with a great shoal of them half the way.)
They are such cruel creatures, Wendy, that they try to pull boys and girls like you into the water and drown them.
WENDY (too guarded by this time to ask what he
