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IV.]
PETER PAN
119
for some tree down which the nastiness of him can descend. Don’t be too much alarmed by this; it is precisely the situation PETER would have chosen; indeed if the whole thing were pretend—. One of his arms droops over the edge of the bed, a leg is arched, and the mouth is not so tightly closed that we cannot see the little pearls. He is dreaming, and in his dreams he is always in pursuit of a boy who was never here, nor anywhere: the only boy who could beat him.