Michael looked back. The Kite was sailing through the air, plunging steadily upwards. Higher and higher it dived, a tiny wisp of green-and-yellow bounding away into the blue. The Keeper’s eyes were popping.
“I never saw such a kite. Not even when I was a boy,” he murmured, staring upwards.
A light cloud came up over the sun and puffed across the sky.
“It’s coming towards the Kite,” said Jane in an excited whisper.
Up and up went the tossing tail, darting through the air until it seemed but a faint, dark speck on the sky. The cloud moved slowly towards it. Nearer, nearer. . .
“Gone!” said Michael, as the speck disappeared behind the thin grey screen.
Jane gave a little sigh. The Twins sat quietly in the perambulator. A curious stillness was upon them all. The taut string running up from Michael’s hand seemed to link them all to the cloud, and the earth to the sky. They waited, holding their breaths, for the Kite to appear again.
Suddenly Jane could bear it no longer.
“Michael,” she cried. “Pull it in! Pull it in!”
Michael turned the stick and gave a long, strong pull. The string remained taut and steady. He pulled again, puffing and panting.
“I can’t,” he said. “It won’t come.”
“I’ll help!” said Jane. “Now – pull!”
But, hard as they tugged, the string would not give, and the Kite remained hidden behind the cloud.
“Let me!” said the Keeper importantly. “When I was a boy we did it this way.”
And he put his hand on the string, just above Jane’s, and gave it a short, sharp jerk. It seemed to give a little.
“Now – all together – pull!”
The Keeper tossed off his hat, and planting their feet firmly on the grass, Jane and Michael pulled with all their might.
“It’s coming!” panted Michael.
Suddenly the string slackened, and a small whirling shape shot through the grey cloud and came floating down.
“Wind her up!” the Keeper spluttered, glancing at Michael.
But the string was already winding round the stick of its own accord.
Down, down came the Kite, turning over and over in the air, wildly dancing at the end of the jerking string.
Jane gave a little gasp.
“Something’s happened,” she cried. “That’s not our Kite! It’s quite a different one!”
They stared.
It was quite true. The Kite was no longer green-and-yellow. It had turned colour and was not navy-blue. Down it came, tossing and bounding.
Suddenly Michael gave a shout.
“Jane! Jane! It isn’t a Kite at all. It looks like – oh, it looks like—”
“Wind, Michael, wind quickly!” gasped Jane. “I can hardly wait!”
For now, above the tallest trees, the shape at the end of the string was clearly visible. There was no sign of the green-and-yellow Kite, but in its place danced a figure that seemed at once strange and familiar, a figure wearing a blue coat with silver buttons and a straw hat trimmed with daisies. Tucked under its arm was an Umbrella with a parrot’s head for a handle, a brown carpet-bag dangled from one hand, while the other held firmly to the end of the shortening string.
“Ah!” Jane gave a shout of triumph. “It is her!”
“I knew it!” cried Michael, his hands trembling on the winding-stick.
“Lumme!” said the Park Keeper, gaping and blinking. “Lumme!”
On sailed the curious figure, its feet neatly clearing the tops of the trees. They could see the face now, and the well-known features – coal-black hair, bright blue eyes, and nose turned upwards like the nose of a Dutch doll.
As the last length of string wound itself round the stick, the figure drifted down between the Lime Trees and alighted primly on the grass.
In a flash Michael dropped the stick. Away he bounded, with Jane at his heels.
“Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins!” they cried, and flung themselves upon her.
Behind them the Twins were crowing like cocks in the morning, and the Park Keeper was opening and shutting his mouth as though he would like to say something but could not find the words.
“At last! At last! At last!” shouted Michael wildly, clutching at her arm, her bag, her umbrella – anything so long as he might touch her and feel that she was really true.
“We knew you’d come back! We found the letter that said au revoir!” cried Jane, flinging her arms round the waist of the blue overcoat.
A satisfied smile flickered for a moment over Mary Poppins’ face – up from the mouth, over the turned-up nose, into the blue eyes. But it died away swiftly.
“I’ll thank you to remember,” she remarked, disengaging herself from their hands, “that this is a Public Park and not a Bear Garden. Such goings on! I might as well be at the Zoo. And where, may I ask, are your gloves?”
They fell back, fumbling in their pockets.
“Humph! Put them on, please!”
Trembling with excitement and delight, Jane and Michael stuffed their hands into their gloves and put on their hats.
Mary Poppins moved towards the perambulator. The Twins cooed happily as she strapped them in more securely and straightened the rug. Then she glanced round.
“Who put that Duck in the pond?” she demanded, in that stern, haughty voice they knew so well.
“I did,” said Jane. “For the Twins. He was going to New York.”
“Well, take him out, then!” said Mary Poppins. “He is not going to New York – wherever that is – but Home to Tea.”
And, slinging her carpet-bag over the handle of the perambulator, she began to push the Twins towards the gate.
The Park Keeper, suddenly finding his voice, blocked her way.
“See here!” he said, staring. “I shall have to report this. It’s against the Regulations. Coming down out of the sky like that. And where from, I’d like to know, where from?”
He broke off, for Mary Poppins was eyeing him up and down in a way that made him feel he would rather be somewhere else.
“If I was a Park Keeper,” she remarked primly, “I should put on my cap and button my coat. Excuse me!”
And, haughtily waving him aside, she pushed past with the perambulator.
Blushing, the Keeper bent to pick up his hat. When he looked up again, Mary Poppins and the children had disappeared through the gate of Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane.
He stared at the path. Then he stared up at the sky and down at the path again.
He took off his hat, scratched his head, and put it on again.
“I never saw such a thing!” he said shakily. “Not even when I was a boy.”
And he went away muttering and looking very upset. . .
“Why, it’s Mary Poppins!” said Mrs Banks, as they came into the hall. “Where did you come from? Out of the blue?”
“Yes,” began Michael joyfully, “she came down on the end—”
He stopped short, for Mary Poppins had fixed him with one of her terrible looks.
“I found them in the Park, ma’am,” she said, turning to Mrs Banks, “so I brought them home!”
“Have you come to stay, then?”
“For the present, ma’am.”
“But, Mary Poppins, last time you were here you left without a Word of Warning. How do I know you won’t do it again?”
“You don’t, ma’am,” replied Mary Poppins calmly.
Mrs Banks looked rather taken aback.
“But – but will you, do you think?” she asked uncertainly.
“I couldn’t say, ma’am, I’m sure.”
“Oh!” said Mrs Banks, because, at the moment, she couldn’t think of anything else.
And before she had recovered from her surprise, Mary Poppins had taken her carpet-bag and was hurrying the children upstairs.
Mrs Banks, gazing after them, heard the Nursery door shut quietly. Then, with a sigh of relief, she ran to the telephone.
&n
bsp; “Mary Poppins has come back!” she said happily, into the receiver.
“Has she, indeed?” said Mr Banks at the other end. “Then perhaps I will too.”
And he rang off.
Upstairs Mary Poppins was taking off her overcoat. She hung it on a hook behind the Night-Nursery door. Then she removed her hat and placed it neatly on one of the bed-posts.
Jane and Michael watched the familiar movements. Everything about her was just as it had always been. They could hardly believe she had ever been away.
Mary Poppins bent down and opened the carpet-bag.
It was quite empty except for a large Thermometer.
“What’s that for?” asked Jane curiously.
“You!” said Mary Poppins.
“But I’m not ill!” Jane protested. “It’s two months since I had measles.”
“Open!” said Mary Poppins, in a voice that made Jane shut her eyes very quickly and open her mouth. The Thermometer slipped in.
“I want to know how you’ve been behaving since I went away!” remarked Mary Poppins sternly.
Then she took out the Thermometer and held it up to the light.
“Careless, Thoughtless and Untidy,” she read out.
Jane stared.
“I’m not surprised!” said Mary Poppins, and thrust the Thermometer into Michael’s mouth. He kept his lips tightly pressed upon it until she plucked it out and read:
“A very Noisy, Mischievous, Troublesome little Boy.”
“I’m not,” he said angrily.
For answer she thrust the Thermometer under his nose and he spelt out the large red letters.
“A-V-E-R-Y-N-O-I-S. . .”
“You see?” said Mary Poppins, looking at him triumphantly. She opened John’s mouth and popped in the Thermometer.
“Peevish and Excitable.” That was John’s temperature.
And, when Barbara’s was taken, Mary Poppins read out the two words, “Thoroughly Spoilt.”
“Humph!” she snorted. “It’s about time I came back!”
Then she popped it quickly in her own mouth, left it there for a moment, and took it out.
“A very Excellent and Worthy Person, Thoroughly Reliable in every Particular.”
A pleased and conceited smile lit up her face as she read her temperature aloud.
“I thought so,” she said priggishly. “Now – Tea and Bed!”
It seemed to them no more than a minute before they had drunk their milk and eaten their Coconut Cakes and were in and out of the bath. As usual, everything that Mary Poppins did had the speed of electricity. Hooks and eyes rushed apart, buttons darted eagerly out of their holes, sponge and soap ran up and down like lightning, and towels dried with one rub.
Mary Poppins walked along the row of beds tucking them all in. Her starched white apron crackled, and she smelt deliciously of newly-made toast.
When she came to Michael’s bed, she bent down and rummaged under it for a minute. Then she carefully drew out her camp bedstead with her possessions laid upon it in neat piles. The cake of Sunlight soap, the toothbrush, the packet of hairpins, the bottle of scent, the small folding armchair and the box of throat lozenges. Also the seven flannel nightgowns, the four cotton ones, the boots, the dominoes, the two bathing caps and the postcard album.
Jane and Michael sat up and stared.
“Where did they come from?” demanded Michael. “I’ve been under my bed simply hundreds of times and I know they weren’t there before.”
Mary Poppins did not reply. She had begun to undress.
Jane and Michael exchanged glances. They knew it was no good asking, because Mary Poppins never explained anything.
She slipped off her starched white collar and fumbled at the clip of a chain round her neck.
“What’s inside that?” enquired Michael, gazing at a small gold locket that hung on the end of the chain.
“A portrait.”
“Whose?”
“You’ll know when the time comes – not before!” she snapped.
“When will the time come?”
“When I go!”
They stared at her with startled eyes.
“But, Mary Poppins,” cried Jane, “you won’t ever leave us again, will you? Oh, say you won’t!”
Mary Poppins glared at her.
“A nice life I’d have,” she remarked, “if I spent all my days with you!”
“But you will stay?” persisted Jane eagerly.
Mary Poppins tossed the locket up and down on her palm.
“I’ll stay till the chain breaks!” she said briefly.
And, popping a cotton nightgown over her head, she began to undress beneath it.
“That’s all right,” Michael whispered across to Jane. “I noticed the chain and it’s a very strong one.”
He nodded to her reassuringly. They curled up in their beds and lay watching Mary Poppins as she moved mysteriously beneath the tent of her nightgown. And they thought of her first arrival at Cherry Tree Lane and all the strange and astonishing things that had happened afterwards; of how she had flown away on her umbrella when the wind changed; of the long, weary days without her and of her marvellous descent from the sky this afternoon.
Suddenly Michael remembered something.
“My Kite!” he said, sitting up in bed. “I forgot all about it! Where’s my Kite?”
Mary Poppins’ head came up through the neck of her nightgown.
“Kite?” she said crossly. “Which Kite? What Kite?”
“My green-and-yellow Kite with the tassels. The one you came down on, at the end of the string.”
Mary Poppins stared at him. He could not tell if she was more astonished than angry, but she looked as if she was both.
And her voice when she spoke was worse than her look.
“Did I understand you to say that –” she repeated the words slowly, between her teeth – “that I came down from somewhere on the end of a string?”
“But you did!” faltered Michael. “Today. Out of a cloud. We saw you!”
“On the end of a string. Like a Monkey or a Spinning-Top? Me, Michael Banks?”
Mary Poppins, in her fury, seemed to have grown to twice her usual size. She hovered over him in her nightgown, huge and angry, waiting for him to reply.
He clutched the bed-clothes for support.
“Don’t say any more, Michael!” Jane whispered warningly across from her bed. But he had gone too far now to stop.
“Then – where’s my Kite—” he said recklessly. “If you didn’t come down – er, in the way I said – where’s my Kite? It’s not on the end of the string.”
“O-ho? And I am, I suppose?” she enquired with a scoffing laugh.
He saw then that it was no good going on. He could not explain. He would have to give it up.
“N-no,” he said, in a thin voice. “No, Mary Poppins.”
She turned and snapped out the electric light.
“Your manners,” she remarked tartly, “have not improved since I went away! On the end of a string, indeed! I have never been so insulted in my life. Never!”
And with a furious sweep of her arm, she turned down her bed and flounced into it, pulling the blankets right over her head.
Michael lay very quiet, still holding his bed-clothes tightly.
“She did, though, didn’t she? We saw her,” he whispered presently to Jane.
But Jane did not answer. Instead, she pointed towards the Night-Nursery door.
Michael lifted his head cautiously.
Behind the door, on a hook, hung Mary Poppins’ overcoat, its silver buttons gleaming in the glow of the nightlight. And, dangling from the pocket, were a row of paper tassels, the tassels of a green-and-yellow Kite.
They gazed at it for a long time.
Then they nodded across to each other. They knew there was nothing to be said, for there were things about Mary Poppins they would never understand. But – she was back again. That was all that mattered.
> The even sound of her breathing came floating across from the camp bed. They felt peaceful and happy and complete.
“I don’t mind, Jane, if it has a purple tail,” hissed Michael presently.
“No, Michael!” said Jane. “I really think a red would be better.”
After that there was no sound in the Nursery but the sound of five people breathing very quietly. . .
“P-p! P-p!” went Mr Banks’ pipe.
“Click-click!” went Mrs Banks’ knitting-needles.
Mr Banks put his feet up on the study mantelpiece and snored a little.
After a while, Mrs Banks spoke.
“Do you still think of taking a long sea-voyage?” she asked.
“Er – I don’t think so. I am rather a bad sailor. And my hat’s all right now. I had the whole of it polished by the Shoe-Black at the corner and it looks as good as new. Even better. Besides, now that Mary Poppins is back, my Shaving-Water will be just the right temperature.”
Mrs Banks smiled to herself and went on knitting.
She felt very glad that Mr Banks was such a bad sailor and that Mary Poppins had come back. . .
Down in the Kitchen, Mrs Brill was putting a fresh bandage round Ellen’s ankle.
“I never thought much of her when she was here,” said Mrs Brill. “But I must say that this has been a different house since this afternoon. As quiet as a Sunday and as neat as Ninepence. I’m not sorry she’s back.”
“Neither am I, indeed!” said Ellen thankfully.
“And neither am I!” thought Robertson Ay, listening to the conversation through the wall of the broom cupboard. “Now I shall have a little peace!”
He settled himself comfortably on the upturned coal-scuttle and fell asleep again with his head against a broom.
But what Mary Poppins thought about it nobody ever knew, for she kept her thoughts to herself and never told anyone anything. . .
Chapter Two
MISS ANDREW’S LARK
IT WAS SATURDAY afternoon.
In the hall of Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane, Mr Banks was busy tapping the barometer and telling Mrs Banks what the weather was going to do.
“Moderate South wind; average temperature: local thunder; sea slight,” he said. “Further outlook unsettled. Hullo – what’s that?”
He broke off as a bumping, jumping, thumping noise sounded overhead.
Mary Poppins--the Complete Collection Page 14