This page has been validated.
26
PETER PAN
[act
JOHN. Is anything there?
MRS. DARLING. All quite quiet and still. Oh, how I wish I was not going out to dinner to-night.
MICHAEL. Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?
MRS. DARLING. Nothing, precious. They are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.
(Nevertheless we may be sure she means to tell LIZA, the little maid, to look in on them frequently till she comes home. She goes from bed to bed, after her custom, tucking them in and crooning a lullaby.)
MICHAEL (drowsily). Mother, I’m glad of you.
MRS. DARLING (with a last look around, her hand on the switch). Dear night-lights that protect my sleeping babes, burn clear and steadfast to-night.
(The nursery darkens and she is gone, intentionally leaving the door ajar. Something uncanny is going to happen, we expect, for a quiver has passed through the room, just sufficient to touch the night-lights. They blink three times one after the other and go
