Again he sprang ashore as if she had called him back. ‘I shall come and look for you tonight,’ he said, squeezing close, ‘but if you hurry away I think you will be in time.’

Then he pressed a last thimble on her sweet little mouth, and covered his face with his hands so that he might not see her go.

‘Dear Peter!’ she cried.

‘Dear Maimie!’ cried the tragic boy.

She leapt into his arms, so that it was a sort of fairy wedding, and then she hurried away. Oh, how she hastened to the gates! Peter, you may be sure, was back in the Gardens that night as soon as Lock- out sounded, but he found no Maimie, and so he knew she had been in time. For long he hoped that some night she would come back to him; often he thought he saw her waiting for him by the shore of the Serpentine as his bark drew to land, but Maimie never went back. She wanted to, but she was afraid that if she saw her dear Betwixt-and-Between again she would linger with him too long, and besides the ayah now kept a sharp eye on her. But she often talked lovingly of Peter, and she knitted a kettle-holder for him, and one day when she was wondering what Easter present he would like, her mother made a suggestion.

‘Nothing’, she said thoughtfully, ‘would be so useful to him as a goat.’

‘He could ride on it,’ cried Maimie, ‘and play on his pipe at the same time.’

‘Then,’ her mother asked, ‘won’t you give him your goat, the one you frighten Tony with at night?’

‘But it isn’t a real goat,’ Maimie said.

‘It seems very real to Tony,’ replied her mother.

‘It seems frightfully real to me too,’ Maimie admitted, ‘but how could I give it to Peter?’

Her mother knew a way, and next day, accompanied by Tony (who was really quite a nice boy, though of course he could not compare), they went to the Gardens, and Maimie stood alone within a fairy ring, and then her mother, who was a rather gifted lady, said—

‘My daughter, tell me, if you can,
What have you got for Peter Pan?’

To which Maimie replied—

‘I have a goat for him to ride,
Observe me cast it far and wide.’

She then flung her arms about as if she were sowing seed, and turned round three times.

Next Tony said—

‘If P. doth find it waiting here,
Wilt ne’er again make me to fear?’

And Maimie answered—

‘By dark or light I fondly swear
Never to see goats anywhere.’

She also left a letter to Peter in a likely place, explaining what she had done, and begging him to ask the fairies to turn the goat into one convenient for riding on. Well, it all happened just as she hoped, for Peter found the letter, and of course nothing could be easier for the fairies than to turn the goat into a real one, and so that is how Peter got the goat on which he now rides round the Gardens every night playing sublimely on his pipe. And Maimie kept her promise, and never frightened Tony with a goat