Lock-out Time
the Queen said, ‘but I can’t open the door for you.’
‘The window I flew out at will be open,’ Peter said confidently. ‘Mother always keeps it open in the hope that I may fly back.’
‘How do you know?’ they asked, quite surprised, and, really, Peter could not explain how he knew.
‘I just do know,’ he said.
So as he persisted in his wish, they had to grant it. The way they gave him power to fly was this: They all tickled him on the shoulder, and soon he felt a funny itching in that part, and then up he rose higher and higher, and flew away out of the Gardens and over the housetops.
It was so delicious that instead of flying straight to his own home he skimmed away over St. Paul’s to the Crystal Palace and back by the river and Regent’s Park, and by the time he reached his mother’s window he had quite made up his mind that his second wish should be to become a bird.
The window was wide open, just as he knew it would be, and in he fluttered, and there was his mother lying asleep. Peter alighted softly on the
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