But it was now ten minutes since three scoundrels had been breathing behind the curtains, and Peter Pan can do a great deal in ten minutes.
We now return to the nursery.
“It’s all right,” John announced, emerging from his hiding-place. “I say, Peter, can you really fly?”
Instead of troubling to answer him Peter flew around the room, taking the mantelpiece on the way.
“How topping!” said John and Michael.
“How sweet!” cried Wendy.
“Yes, I’m sweet, oh, I am sweet!” said Peter, forgetting his manners again.
It looked delightfully easy, and they tried it first from the floor and then from the beds, but they always went down instead of up.
“I say, how do you do it?” asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a practical boy.
“You just think lovely wonderful thoughts,” Peter explained, “and they lift you up in the air.”
He showed them again.
“You’re so nippy at it,” John said, “couldn’t you do it very slowly once?”
Peter did it both slowly and quickly. “I’ve got it now, Wendy!” cried John, but soon he found he had not. Not one of them could fly an inch, though even Michael was in words of two syllables, and Peter did not know A from Z.