What did disturb her at times was that John remembered his parents vaguely only , as people he had once known , while Michael was quite willing to believe that she was really his mother . These things scared her a little , and nobly anxious to do her duty , she tried to fix the old life in their minds by setting them examination papers on it , as like as possible to the ones she used to do at school . The other boys thought this awfully interesting , and insisted on joining , and they made slates for themselves , and sat round the table , writing and thinking hard about the questions she had written on another slate and passed round . They were the most ordinary questions -- `` What was the colour of Mother 's eyes ? Which was taller , Father or Mother ? Was Mother blonde or brunette ? Answer all three questions if possible . '' '' -LRB- A -RRB- Write an essay of not less than 40 words on How I spent my last Holidays , or The Characters of Father and Mother compared . Only one of these to be attempted . '' Or '' -LRB- 1 -RRB- Describe Mother 's laugh ; -LRB- 2 -RRB- Describe Father 's laugh ; -LRB- 3 -RRB- Describe Mother 's Party Dress ; -LRB- 4 -RRB- Describe the Kennel and its Inmate . '' They were just everyday questions like these , and when you could not answer them you were told to make a cross ; and it was really dreadful what a number of crosses even John made . Of course the only boy who replied to every question was Slightly , and no one could have been more hopeful of coming out first , but his answers were perfectly ridiculous , and he really came out last : a melancholy thing . Peter did not compete . For one thing he despised all mothers except Wendy , and for another he was the only boy on the island who could neither write nor spell ; not the smallest word . He was above all that sort of thing . By the way , the questions were all written in the past tense . What was the colour of Mother 's eyes , and so on . Wendy , you see , had been forgetting , too . Adventures , of course , as we shall see , were of daily occurrence ; but about this time Peter invented , with Wendy 's help , a new game that fascinated him enormously , until he suddenly had no more interest in it , which , as you have been told , was what always happened with his games . It consisted in pretending not to have adventures , in doing the sort of thing John and Michael had been doing all their lives , sitting on stools flinging balls in the air , pushing each other , going out for walks and coming back without having killed so much as a grizzly .
To see XXXXX doing nothing on a stool was a great sight ; he could not help looking solemn at such times , to sit still seemed to him such a comic thing to do .
Father John Michael Mother Peter Wendy brunette daily first slates