He thought Mrs Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he went on sternly, ‘I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie is round my neck we don’t go out to dinner tonight, and if I don’t go out to dinner tonight, I never go to the office again, and if I don’t go to the office again, you and I starve, and our children will be flung into the streets.’

Even then Mrs Darling was placid. ‘Let me try, dear,’ she said, and indeed that was what he had come to ask her to do; and with her nice cool hands she tied his tie for him, while the children stood around to see their fate decided. Some men would have resented her being able to do it so easily, but Mr Darling was far too fine a nature for that; he thanked her carelessly, at once forgot his rage, and in another moment was dancing round the room with Michael on his back.

‘How wildly we romped!’ says Mrs Darling now, recalling it.

‘Our last romp!’ Mr Darling groaned.

‘O George, do you remember Michael suddenly said to me, “How did you get to know me, mother?” ’

‘I remember!’

‘They were rather sweet, don’t you think, George?’

‘And they were ours, ours, and now they are gone.’

The romp had ended with the appearance of Nana, and most unluckily Mr Darling collided against her, covering his trousers with hairs. They were not only new trousers, but they were the first he had ever had with braid on them, and he had to bite his lip to prevent the tears coming. Of course Mrs Darling brushed him, but he began to talk again about its being a mistake to have a dog for a nurse.

‘George, Nana is a treasure.’

‘No doubt, but I have an uneasy feeling at times that she looks upon the children as puppies.’

‘Oh no, dear one, I feel sure she knows they have souls.’

‘I wonder,’ Mr Darling said thoughtfully, ‘I wonder.’ It was an opportunity, his wife felt, for telling him about the boy. At first he pooh-poohed the story, but he became thoughtful when she showed him the shadow.

‘It is nobody I know,’ he said, examining it carefully, ‘but he does look a scoundrel.’

‘We were still discussing it, you remember,’ says Mr Darling, ‘when Nana came in with Michael’s medicine. You will never carry the bottle in your mouth again, Nana, and it is all my fault.’

Strong man though he was, there is no doubt that he had behaved rather foolishly over the medicine. If he had a weakness, it was for thinking that all his life he had taken medicine boldly; and so now, when Michael dodged the spoon in Nana’s mouth, he had said reprovingly, ‘Be a man, Michael.’

‘Won’t, won’t,’ Michael cried naughtily. Mrs Darling left the room to get a chocolate for him, and Mr Darling thought this showed want of firmness.

‘Mother, don’t pamper him,’ he called after her. ‘Michael, when I was your age I took medicine without a murmur. I said, “Thank you, kind parents, for giving me bottles to make me well.” ’

He really thought this was true, and Wendy, who was now in her nightgown, believed it also, and she said, to encourage Michael, ‘That medicine you sometimes take, father, is much nastier, isn’t it?’