Peter’s heart was so glad that he felt he must sing all day long, just as the birds sing for joy, but he needed an instrument, so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to sit by the shore of the island of an evening, practising the sough of the wind and the ripple of the water, and catching handfulls of the shine of the moon, and he put them all in his pipe and played them so beautifully that even the birds were deceived, and they would say to each other, ‘Was that a fish leaping in the water or was it Peter playing leaping fish on his pipe?’
And sometimes he played the birth of birds, and then the mothers would turn round in their nests to see whether they had laid an egg.
If you are a child of the gardens you must know the chestnut-tree near the bridge, which comes out in flower first of all the chestnuts, but perhaps you have not heard why this tree leads the way. It is because Peter wearies for summer and plays that it has come, and the chestnut being so near, hears him and is cheated…
