The Little White Bird (1902)

       Table of Contents

       I: David and I Set Forth Upon a Journey

       II: The Little Nursery Governess

       III: Her Marriage, Her Clothes, Her Appetite, and an Inventory of Her Furniture

       IV: A Night-Piece

       V: The Fight For Timothy

       VI: A Shock

       VII: The Last of Timothy

       VIII: The Inconsiderate Waiter

       IX: A Confirmed Spinster

       X: Sporting Reflections

       XI: The Runaway Perambulator

       XII: The Pleasantest Club in London

       XIII: The Grand Tour of the Gardens

       XIV: Peter Pan

       XV: The Thrush’s Nest

       XVI: Lock-Out Time

       XVII: The Little House

       XVIII: Peter’s Goat

       XIX: An Interloper

       XX: David and Porthos Compared

       XXI: William Paterson

       XXII: Joey

       XXIII: Pilkington’s

       XXIV: Barbara

       XXV: The Cricket Match

       XXVI: The Dedication

      Publisher Note: Only one chapter in this novel is Peter Pan related. It was the first appearance of Peter Pan as a character; even before his first appearance in the 1904 play. We have included the complete novel; however, for the sake of completion.

I: David and I Set Forth Upon a Journey

      Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an invitation from his mother: “I shall be so pleased if you will come and see me,” and I always reply in some such words as these: “Dear madam, I decline.” And if David asks why I decline, I explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman.

      “Come this time, father,” he urged lately, “for it is her birthday, and she is twenty-six,” which is so great an age to David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer.

      “Twenty-six, is she, David?” I replied. “Tell her I said she looks more.”

      I had my delicious dream that night. I dreamt that I too was twenty-six, which was a long time ago, and that I took train to a place called my home, whose whereabouts I see not in my waking hours, and when I alighted at the station a dear lost love was waiting for me, and we went away together. She met me in no ecstasy of emotion, nor was I surprised to find her there; it was as if we had been married for years and parted for a day. I like to think that I gave her some of the things to carry.

      Were I to tell my delightful dream to David’s mother, to whom I have never in my life addressed one word, she would droop her head and raise it bravely, to imply that I make her very sad but very proud, and she would be wishful to lend me her absurd little pocket handkerchief. And then, had I the heart, I might make a disclosure that would startle her, for it is not the face of David’s mother that I see in my dreams.

      Has it ever been your lot, reader, to be persecuted by a pretty woman who thinks, without a tittle of reason, that you are bowed down under a hopeless partiality for her? It is thus that I have been pursued for several years now by the unwelcome sympathy of the tender-hearted