It was not really a happy question to ask him; it was like an examination paper that asks grammar, when what you want to be asked is Kings of England.
"I don't know," he replied uneasily, "but I am quite young." He really knew nothing about it, he had merely suspicions, but he said at a venture, "Wendy, I ran away the day I was born." Wendy was quite surprised, but interested; and she indicated in the charming drawing-room manner, by a touch on her night-gown, that he could sit nearer her.
"It was because I heard father and mother," he explained in a low voice, "talking about what I was to be when I became a man." He was extraordinarily agitated now.

"I don't want ever to be a man," he said with passion.

"I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.

So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the fairies." She gave him a look of the most intense admiration, and he thought it was because he had run away, but it was really because he knew fairies.
Wendy had lived such a home life that to know fairies struck her as quite delightful.

She poured out questions about them, to his surprise, for they were rather a nuisance to him, getting in his way and so on, and indeed he sometimes had to give them a hiding [spanking].