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“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.
“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.
