There was something he wanted very much , but , though he knew he wanted it , he could not think what it was . What he wanted so much was his mother to blow his nose , but that never struck him , so he decided to appeal to the fairies for enlightenment . They are reputed to know a good deal . There were two of them strolling along the Baby Walk , with their arms round each other 's waists , and he hopped down to address them . The fairies have their tiffs with the birds , but they usually give a civil answer to a civil question , and he was quite angry when these two ran away the moment they saw him . Another was lolling on a garden-chair , reading a postage-stamp which some human had let fall , and when he heard Peter 's voice he popped in alarm behind a tulip . To Peter 's bewilderment he discovered that every fairy he met fled from him . A band of workmen , who were sawing down a toadstool , rushed away , leaving their tools behind them . A milkmaid turned her pail upside down and hid in it . Soon the Gardens were in an uproar . Crowds of fairies were running this way and that , asking each other stoutly , who was afraid , lights were extinguished , doors barricaded , and from the grounds of Queen Mab 's palace came the rubadub of drums , showing that the royal guard had been called out . A regiment of Lancers came charging down the Broad Walk , armed with holly-leaves , with which they jog the enemy horribly in passing . Peter heard the little people crying everywhere that there was a human in the Gardens after Lock-out Time , but he never thought for a moment that he was the human . He was feeling stuffier and stuffier , and more and more wistful to learn what he wanted done to his nose , but he pursued them with the vital question in vain ; the timid creatures ran from him , and even the Lancers , when he approached them up the Hump , turned swiftly into a side-walk , on the pretence that they saw him there . Despairing of the fairies , he resolved to consult the birds , but now he remembered , as an odd thing , that all the birds on the weeping beech had flown away when he alighted on it , and though that had not troubled him at the time , he saw its meaning now . Every living thing was shunning him . Poor little Peter Pan , he sat down and cried , and even then he did not know that , for a bird , he was sitting on his wrong part . It is a blessing that he did not know , for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly , and the moment you doubt whether you can fly , you cease forever to be able to do it . The reason birds can fly and we ca n't is simply that they have perfect faith , for to have faith is to have wings . Now , except by flying , no one can reach the island in the Serpentine , for the boats of humans are forbidden to land there , and there are stakes round it , standing up in the water , on each of which a bird-sentinel sits by day and night .
It was to the XXXXX that Peter now flew to put his strange case before old Solomon Caw , and he alighted on it with relief , much heartened to find himself at last at home , as the birds call the island .
Serpentine arms beech bewilderment deal fall island regiment thing uproar