Read Peter and Alice for Free Online Page B

not found mine? … Days and nights of balls and fetes and tableau vivant on the lawns, riding to the hounds, into town for theatre and exhibitions, all those golden things that don’t exist anymore, like this music, like the waltz… And then the boys! Best of all, our boys… Alan and Rex and Caryl… Our three sons growing strong and true…
    PETER PAN : (To ALICE IN WONDERLAND .) Oh, all right! Stop looking at me with those great cow eyes!
    He dances with ALICE IN WONDERLAND .
    ALICE dances with REGGIE .
    BARRIE dances with CARROLL .
    Even PETER is charmed by the music and swirling couples .
    ALICE : And if as he aged he grew more conservative in his views, tending to be a little stern, a little mean…and if he never read a book, but played golf instead…and had clumsy affairs with those seven pretty maids…andI was the tiniest bit bored by it…by everything…and I would never be Jane Austen…and I took rather too much laudanum to sleep at all… Well, if that’s growing up it held no heartbreak for me. It was not Mr. Dodgson’s place called Adulthood, that darkroom horror… It was my life, and in the end my boys made it all worthwhile.
    PETER : Crawling over your lap like puppies.
    ALICE : My children . One more marvelous than the last… Alan and Rex and Caryl…
    PETER : George and Jack and Peter and Michael and Nico…
    CARROLL : Alice and Lorina and Edith…
    BARRIE : Wendy and Michael and John…
    ALICE : How could it ever end?
    PETER : If we could only stay here forever.
    ALICE : Stop the clock.
    PETER : Close the book.
    ALICE : Just one more endless summer.
    The music suddenly ends as PETER PAN breaks the mood .
    Boldly, to ALICE IN WONDERLAND :
    PETER PAN : I’ll never understand grown ups!
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Nor I. They have perfectly good breast of guinea hen in front of them, they only want mutton.
    PETER PAN : Any time they’re happy, they can’t wait to be sad.
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Never here and now, always there and later.
    PETER PAN : Always looking at the clock.
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Looking over their shoulder.
    PETER PAN : Then back at the clock.
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Time for this, time for that, never time for “well, here we are, isn’t it glorious?”
    PETER PAN : Go to a party, look at the cake, long for the cake, reach for the cake–
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Don’t eat the cake.
    PETER PAN : I love cake.
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : I love pie.
    PETER PAN : He loves gin.
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : And have you noticed – they’re always waiting for it to rain?
    PETER PAN : They carry umbrellas on the sunniest days – which is dangerous because if you’re attacked you need one hand for your cutlass and the other for your pistol.
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Everyone knows that!
    PETER PAN : Maybe they forgot?
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Sometimes they don’t even have pistols.
    PETER PAN : What do they do when the Indians attack?!
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : They’re always forgetting.
    PETER PAN : When they’re not always remembering.
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : So there’s never time for tarts.
    PETER PAN : Or cutlasses or kites.
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Or croquet!
    PETER PAN : Or dancing to the pipes in the deep, dark woods!
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : Like they used to.
    PETER PAN : I hear the pipes all the time!
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : She wasn’t always like this, mind, like she is now. She was wicked in her day.
    PETER PAN : The old lady? Not likely!
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : That darling little sable brush? Pinched it.
    PETER PAN : Good for her!
    PETER : You didn’t!
    ALICE : Still have it!
    ALICE IN WONDERLAND : And she knew men. Grown up gentlemen I mean, in her day. A lot of them.
    ALICE : (Unpleasantly shocked.) Oh.
    PETER PAN : He carries a flask and drinks all the time.
    PETER : (Quickly to ALICE .) I told you that.
    PETER PAN and ALICE IN WONDERLAND grow increasingly