“Feel like, Peter! I don't understand.” “To have to--to have to fight for oneself?” His father leant out and touched him. “Have you begun to think of that already? Fight for yourself! You won't have to do that for a long while yet.” “But----.” Peter allowed himself to be drawn into the arms of the man who had always stood between him and the world. “But when the time comes, I don't want to fail like----,” he was going to have said like Uncle Waffles, but he said instead, “like some people.” And then, after a pause, “I feel so unprepared.” “We've all felt that way, sonny. Somehow we get the strength. You'll get it.” Peter sighed contentedly. He was again in the nest with the creeper-covered walls about him. The strained note had gone out of his voice when he spoke now. “There's so much to learn. It seems so strange to think that one day I'll have to grow up, like you, and marry, and earn money, and have little boys and girls.” His father laughed huskily. “Very strange! Strange even to me, Peter--and I've done it: And, d'you know, there are times when even a man looks back and is surprised that he's grown up. He feels just what you're feeling--the wonder of it. It seems only the other day that I was as small as you are; and only the other day that I was frightened of life and what it meant. Are you frightened?” For answer Peter stood up. “Not so much frightened as puzzled.” His father rose and led him out from beneath the leaves, which crowded above their heads. He pointed up past the roofs of houses. “We couldn't see them under there,” he said. “Every night they come to their places and stand, shining. Some one sends them. Some one sent you and me, Peter. We don't know why. There are people who sit always under trees and never look up. They'll tell you that there aren't any stars overhead. We're not like that. We know that whoever is careful enough to hang lamps on the clouds, is careful enough to watch over us. So we needn't be afraid of living, need we, old chap?” Peter pressed his father's hand. “I'll try to remember.”