she asked , aghast . `` I shall know when you give it to me , '' he replied stiffly , and not to hurt his feeling she gave him a thimble . `` Now , '' said he , `` shall I give you a kiss ? '' and she replied with a slight primness , `` If you please . '' She made herself rather cheap by inclining her face toward him , but he merely dropped an acorn button into her hand , so she slowly returned her face to where it had been before , and said nicely that she would wear his kiss on the chain around her neck . It was lucky that she did put it on that chain , for it was afterwards to save her life . When people in our set are introduced , it is customary for them to ask each other 's age , and so Wendy , who always liked to do the correct thing , asked Peter how old he was . It was not really a happy question to ask him ; it was like an examination paper that asks grammar , when what you want to be asked is Kings of England . `` I do n't know , '' he replied uneasily , `` but I am quite young . '' He really knew nothing about it , he had merely suspicions , but he said at a venture , `` Wendy , I ran away the day I was born . '' Wendy was quite surprised , but interested ; and she indicated in the charming drawing-room manner , by a touch on her night-gown , that he could sit nearer her . `` It was because I heard father and mother , '' he explained in a low voice , `` talking about what I was to be when I became a man . '' He was extraordinarily agitated now . `` I do n't want ever to be a man , '' he said with passion . `` I want always to be a little boy and to have fun . So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the fairies . '' She gave him a look of the most intense admiration , and he thought it was because he had run away , but it was really because he knew fairies . Wendy had lived such a home life that to know fairies struck her as quite delightful . She poured out questions about them , to his surprise , for they were rather a nuisance to him , getting in his way and so on , and indeed he sometimes had to give them a hiding -LSB- spanking -RSB- . Still , he liked them on the whole , and he told her about the beginning of fairies .
`` You see , XXXXX , when the first baby laughed for the first time , its laugh broke into a thousand pieces , and they all went skipping about , and that was the beginning of fairies . ''
England Gardens Peter Wendy acorn father people primness spanking thimble