"They saw before them their own pictured faces"

It was one of those mornings when everything looks very neat and bright and shiny, as though the world had been tidied up overnight.

In Cherry Tree Lane the houses blinked as their blinds went up, and the thin shadows of the cherry trees fell in dark stripes across the sunlight. But there was no sound anywhere, except for the tingling of the Ice Cream Man's bell as he wheeled his cart up and down.

"STOP ME AND BUY ONE"

said the placard in front of the cart. And presently a Sweep came round the corner of the Lane and held up his black sweepy hand.

The Ice Cream Man went tingling up to him.

"Penny one," said the Sweep. And he stood leaning on his bundle of brushes as he licked out the Ice Cream with the tip of his tongue. When it was all gone he gently wrapped the cone in his handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

"Don't you eat cones?" said the Ice Cream Man, very surprised.

"No. I collect them!" said the Sweep. And he picked up his brushes and went in through Admiral Boom's front gate because there was no Tradesmen's Entrance.

The Ice Cream Man wheeled his cart up the Lane again and tingled, and the stripes of shadow and sunlight fell on him as he went.

"Never knew it so quiet before!" he murmured, gazing from right to left, and looking out for customers.

At that very moment a loud voice sounded from Number Seventeen. The Ice Cream Man cycled hurriedly up to the gate, hoping for an order.

"I won't stand it! I simply will not stand any more!" shouted Mr. Banks, striding angrily from the front door to the foot of the stairs and back again.

"What is it?" said Mrs. Banks anxiously, hurrying out of the dining-room. "And what is that you are kicking up and down the hall?"

Mr. Banks lunged out with his foot and something black flew half-way up the stairs.

"My hat!" he said between his teeth. "My Best Bowler Hat!"

He ran up the stairs and kicked it down again. It spun for a moment on the tiles and fell at Mrs. Banks' feet.

"Is anything wrong with it?" said Mrs. Banks, nervously. But to herself she wondered whether there was not something wrong with Mr. Banks.

"Look and see!" he roared at her.

Trembling, Mrs. Banks stooped and picked up the hat. It was covered with large, shiny, sticky patches and she noticed it had a peculiar smell.

She sniffed at the brim.

"It smells like boot-polish," she said.

"It is boot-polish," retorted Mr. Banks. "Robertson Ay has brushed my hat with the boot-brush — in fact, he has polished it."

Mrs. Banks' mouth fell with horror.

"I don't know what's come over this house," Mr. Banks went on. "Nothing ever goes right — hasn't for ages! Shaving water too hot, breakfast coffee too cold. And now — this!"

He snatched his hat from Mrs. Banks and caught up his bag.

"I am going!" he said. "And I don't know that I shall ever come back. I shall probably take a long sea-voyage."

Then he clapped the hat on his head, banged the front door behind him and went through the gate so quickly that he knocked over the Ice Cream Man, who had been listening to the conversation with interest.

"It's your own fault!" he said crossly. "You'd no right to be there!" And he went striding off towards the City, his polished hat shining like a jewel in the sun.

The Ice Cream Man got up carefully and, finding there were no bones broken, he sat down on the kerb, and made it up to himself by eating a large Ice Cream….

"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Banks as she heard the gate slam. "It is quite true. Nothing does go right nowadays. First one thing and then another. Ever since Mary Poppins left without a Word of Warning everything has gone wrong."

She sat down at the foot of the stairs and took out her handkerchief and cried into it.

And as she cried, she thought of all that had happened since that day when Mary Poppins had so suddenly and so strangely disappeared.

"Here one night and gone the next — most upsetting!" said Mrs. Banks gulping.

Nurse Green had arrived soon after and had left at the end of a week because Michael had spat at her. She was followed by Nurse Brown who went out for a walk one day and never came back. And it was not until later that they discovered that all the silver spoons had gone with her.

And after Nurse Brown came Miss Quigley, the Governess, who had to be asked to leave because she played scales for three hours every morning before breakfast and Mr. Banks did not care for music.

"And then," sobbed Mrs. Banks to her handkerchief, "there was Jane's attack of measles, and the bath-room geyser bursting and the Cherry Trees ruined by frost and—"

"If you please, m'm—!" Mrs. Banks looked up to find Mrs. Brill, the cook, at her side.

"The kitchen flue's on fire!" said Mrs. Brill gloomily.

"Oh, dear. What next?" cried Mrs. Banks. "You must tell Robertson Ay to put it out. Where is he?"

"Asleep, m'm, in the broom-cupboard. And when that boy's asleep, nothing'll wake him — not if it's an Earthquake, or a regiment of Tom-toms," said Mrs. Brill, as she followed Mrs. Banks down the kitchen stairs.

Between them they managed to put out the fire but that was not the end of Mrs. Banks' troubles.

She had no sooner finished luncheon than a crash, followed by a loud thud, was heard from upstairs.

"What is it now?" Mrs. Banks rushed out to see what had happened.

"Oh, my leg, my leg!" cried Ellen, the housemaid.

She sat on the stairs, surrounded by broken china, groaning loudly.

"What is the matter with it?" said Mrs. Banks sharply.

"Broken!" said Ellen dismally, leaning against the banisters.

"Nonsense, Ellen! You've sprained your ankle, that's all!"

But Ellen only groaned again.

"My leg is broken! What will I do?" she wailed, over and over again.

At that moment the shrill cries of the Twins sounded from the nursery. They were fighting for the possession of a blue celluloid duck. Their screams rose thinly above the voices of Jane and Michael, who were painting pictures on the wall and arguing as to whether a green horse should have a purple or a red tail. And through this uproar there sounded, like the steady beat of a drum, the groans of Ellen the housemaid. "My leg is broken! What shall I do?"

"This," said Mrs. Banks, rushing upstairs, "is the Last Straw!"

She helped Ellen to bed and put a cold water bandage round her ankle. Then she went up to the Nursery.

Jane and Michael rushed at her.

"It should have a red tail, shouldn't it?" demanded Michael.

"Oh, Mother! Don't let him be so stupid. No horse has a red tail, has it?"

"Well, what horse has a purple tail? Tell me that!" he screamed.

"My duck!" shrieked John, snatching the duck from Barbara.

"Mine, mine, mine!" cried Barbara, snatching it back again.

"Children! Children!" Mrs. Banks was wringing her hands in despair. "Be quiet or I shall Go Mad!"

There was silence for a moment as they stared at her with interest. Would she really? They wondered. And what would she be like if she did?

"Now," said Mrs. Banks. "I will not have this behaviour. Poor Ellen has hurt her ankle, so there is nobody to look after you. You must all go into the Park and play there till Tea-time. Jane and Michael, you must look after the little ones. John, let Barbara have the duck now and you can have it when you go to bed. Michael, you may take your new kite. Now, get your hats, all of you!"

"But I want to finish my horse—" began Michael crossly.

"Why must we go to the Park?" complained Jane. "There's nothing to do there!"

"Because," said Mrs. Banks, "I must have peace. And if you will go quietly and be good children there will be cocoanut cakes for tea."

And before they had time to break out again, she had put on their hats and was hurrying them down the stairs.

"Look both ways!" she called as they went through the gate, Jane pushing the Twins in the perambulator and Michael carrying his kite.

They looked to the right. There was nothing coming.

They looked to the left. Nobody there but the Ice Cream Man who was jingling his bell at the end of the Lane.

Jane hurried across.

Michael trailed after her.

"I hate this life," he said miserably to his kite. "Everything always goes wrong always."

Jane pushed the perambulator as far as the Lake.

"Now," she said, "give me the duck!"

The Twins shrieked and clutched it at either end. Jane uncurled their fingers.

"Look!" she said, throwing the duck into the Lake. "Look, darlings, it's going to India!"

The duck drifted off across the water. The Twins stared at it and sobbed.

Jane ran round the Lake and caught it and sent it off again.

"Now," she said brightly, "it's off to Southampton!"

The Twins did not appear to be amused.

"Now to New York!" They wept harder than ever.

Jane flung out her hands. "Michael, what are we to do with them? If we give it to them they'll fight over it and if we don't they'll go on crying."

"I'll fly the Kite for them," said Michael. "Look, children, look!"

He held up the beautiful green-and-yellow Kite and began to unwind the string. The Twins eyed it tearfully and without interest. He lifted the Kite above his head and ran a little way. It flapped along the air for a moment and then collapsed hollowly on the grass.

"Try again!" said Jane encouragingly.

"You hold it up while I run," said Michael.

This time the Kite rose a little higher. But, as it floated, its long tasselled tail caught in the branches of a lime tree and the Kite dangled limply among the leaves.

The Twins howled lustily.

"Oh, dear!" said Jane. "Nothing goes right nowadays."

"Hullo, hullo, hullo! What's all this?" said a voice behind them.

They turned and saw the Park Keeper, looking very smart in his uniform and peaked cap. He was prodding up stray pieces of paper with the sharp end of his walking stick.

Jane pointed to the lime tree. The Keeper looked up. His face became very stern.

"Now, now, you're breaking the rules! We don't allow Litter here, you know — not on the ground nor in the trees neither. This won't do at all!"

"It isn't litter. It's a Kite," said Michael.

A mild, soft, foolish look came over the Keeper's face. He went up to the lime tree.

"A Kite? So it is. And I haven't flown a Kite since I was a boy!" He sprang up into the tree and came down holding the Kite tenderly under his arm.

"Now," he said excitedly, "we'll wind her up and give her a run and away she'll go!" He put out his hand for the winding-stick.

Michael clutched it firmly.

"Thank you, but I want to fly it myself."

"Well, but you'll let me help, won't you?" said the Keeper humbly. "Seeing as I got it down and I haven't flown a Kite since I was a boy?"

"All right," said Michael, for he didn't want to seem unkind.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" cried the Keeper gratefully. "Now, I take the Kite and walk ten paces down the green. And when I say 'Go!', you run. See!"

The Keeper walked away, counting his steps out loud.

"Eight, nine, ten."

He turned and raised the Kite above his head. "Go!"

Michael began to run.

"Let her out!" roared the Keeper.

Behind him Michael heard a soft flapping noise. There was a tug at the string as the winding-stick turned in his hand.

"She's afloat!" cried the Keeper.

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!"

She laid her hand upon the tugging, quivering string.

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!" he yelled.

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 now navy-blue. Down it came, tossing and bounding.

Suddenly Michael gave a shout.

On sailed the curious figure, its feet neatly clearing the tops of the trees

"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 she!"

"I knew it!" cried Michael, his hands trembling on the winding-stick.

"Lumme!" said the Park Keeper, 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 upon 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 the 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.

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.

Round the bend in the staircase Michael appeared, looking very bad-tempered and sulky as he bumped heavily down. Behind him with a Twin on each arm came Mary Poppins, pushing her knee into his back and sending him with a sharp thud from one stair to the next. Jane followed, carrying the hats.

"Well begun is half done. Down you go, please!" Mary Poppins was saying tartly.

Mr. Banks turned from the barometer and looked up as they appeared.

"Well, what's the matter with you?" he demanded.

"I don't want to go for a walk! I want to play with my new engine," said Michael, gulping as Mary Poppins' knee jerked him one stair lower.

"Nonsense, darling!" said Mrs. Banks. "Of course you do. Walking makes such long, strong legs."

"But I like short legs best," grumbled Michael, stumbling heavily down another stair.

"When I was a little boy," said Mr. Banks, "I loved going for walks. I used to walk with my Governess down to the second lamp-post and back every day. And I never grumbled."

Michael stood still on his stair and looked doubtfully at Mr. Banks.

"Were you ever a little boy?" he said, very surprised.

Mr. Banks seemed quite hurt.

"Of course I was. A sweet little boy with long yellow curls, velvet breeches and button-up boots."

"I can hardly believe it," said Michael, hurrying down the stairs of his own accord and staring up at Mr. Banks.

He simply could not imagine his Father as a little boy. It seemed to him impossible that Mr. Banks had ever been anything but six feet high, middle-aged and rather bald.

"What was the name of your Governess?" asked Jane, running downstairs after Michael. "And was she nice?"

"She was called Miss Andrew and she was a Holy Terror!"

"Hush!" said Mrs. Banks, reproachfully.

"I mean—" Mr. Banks corrected himself, "she was — er — very strict. And always right. And she loved putting everybody else in the wrong and making them feel like a worm. That's what Miss Andrew was like!"

Mr. Banks mopped his brow at the mere memory of his Governess.

Ting! Ting! Ting!

The front door bell pealed and echoed through the house.

Mr. Banks went to the door and opened it. On the step, looking very important, stood the Telegraph Boy.

"Urgent Telegram. Name of Banks. Any answer?" He handed over an orange-coloured envelope.

"If it's good news I'll give you sixpence," said Mr. Banks as he tore open the Telegram and read the message. His face grew pale.

"No answer," he said shortly.

"And no sixpence?"

"Certainly not!" said Mr. Banks bitterly. The Telegraph Boy gave him a reproachful look and went sorrowfully away.

"Oh, what is it?" asked Mrs. Banks, realising the news must be very bad. "Is somebody ill?"

"Worse than that," said Mr. Banks miserably.

"Have we lost all our money?" By this time Mrs. Banks, too, was pale and very anxious.

"Worse still! Didn't the barometer say thunder? And further outlook Unsettled? Listen!"

He smoothed out the telegram and read aloud—

"Coming to stay with you for a month.

Tick-tack! Tick-tock!

The pendulum of the Nursery clock swung backwards and forwards like an old lady nodding her head.

Tick-tack! Tick-tock!

Then the clock stopped ticking and began to whir and growl, quietly at first and then more loudly, as though it were in pain. And as it whirred it shook so violently that the whole mantel-piece trembled. The empty marmalade jar hopped and shook and shivered; John's hair-brush, left there over-night, danced in its bristles; the Royal Doulton Bowl that Mrs. Banks' Great-Aunt Caroline had given her as a Christening Present slipped sideways, so that the three little boys who were playing horses inside it stood on their painted heads.

And after all that, just when it seemed as if the clock must burst, it began to strike.

One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven!

On the last stroke Jane woke up.

The sun was streaming in through a gap in the curtains and falling in gold stripes upon her quilt. Jane sat up and looked round the Nursery. No sound came from Michael's bed. The Twins in their cots were sucking their thumbs and breathing deeply.

"I'm the only one awake," she said, feeling very pleased. "Everybody in the world is asleep except me. I can lie here all by myself and think and think and think."

And she drew her knees up to her chin and curled into the bed as though she were settling down into a nest.

"Now I am a bird!" she said to herself. "I have just laid seven lovely white eggs and I am sitting with my wings over them, brooding. Cluck-cluck! Cluck-cluck!"

She made a small broody noise in her throat.

"And after a long time, say half an hour, there will be a little cheep, and a little tap and the shells will crack. Then, out will pop seven little chicks, three yellow, two brown and two—"

"Time to get up!"

Mary Poppins, appearing suddenly from nowhere, tweaked the bed-clothes from Jane's shoulders.

"Oh, no, NO!" grumbled Jane, pulling them up again.

She felt very cross with Mary Poppins for rushing in and spoiling everything.

"I don't want to get up!" she said, turning her face into the pillow.

"Oh, indeed?" Mary Poppins said calmly, as though the remark had no interest for her. She pulled the bed-clothes right off the bed and Jane found herself standing on the floor.

"Oh, dear," she grumbled, "why do I always have to get up first?"

"You're the eldest — that's why." Mary Poppins pushed her towards the bath-room.

"But I don't want to be the eldest. Why can't Michael be the eldest sometimes?"

"Because you were born first — see?"

"Well, I didn't ask to be. I'm tired of being born first. I wanted to think."

"You can think when you're brushing your teeth."

"Not the same thoughts."

"Well, nobody wants to think the same thoughts all the time!"

"I do."

Mary Poppins gave her a quick, black look.

"That's enough, thank you!" And from the tone in her voice Jane knew she meant what she said.

Mary Poppins hurried away to wake Michael.

Jane put down her toothbrush and sat on the edge of the bath.

"It's not fair," she grumbled, kicking the linoleum with her toes. "Making me do all the horrid things just because I'm the eldest! I won't brush my teeth!"

Immediately she felt surprised at herself. She was usually quite glad to be older than Michael and the Twins. It made her feel rather superior and much more important. But to-day — what was the matter with to-day that she felt so cross and peevish?

"If Michael had been born first I'd have had time to hatch out my eggs!" She grumbled to herself, feeling that the day had begun badly.

Unfortunately, instead of getting better, it grew worse.

At breakfast Mary Poppins discovered there was only enough Puffed Rice for three.

"Well, Jane must have Porridge," she said, setting out the plates and sniffing angrily for she did not like making Porridge. There were always too many lumps in it.

"But why?" complained Jane. "I want Puffed Rice."

Mary Poppins darted a fierce look at her.

"Because you're the eldest!"

There it was again! That hateful word. She kicked the leg of her chair under the table, hoping she was scratching off the varnish, and ate her porridge as slowly as she dared. She turned it round and round in her mouth swallowing as little as possible. It would serve everybody right if she starved to death. Then they'd be sorry!

"What is to-day?" enquired Michael cheerfully, scraping up the last of his Puffed Rice.

"Wednesday," said Mary Poppins. "Leave the pattern on the plate, please!"

"Then it's to-day we're going to tea with Miss Lark!"

"If you're good," said Mary Poppins darkly, as though she did not believe such a thing was possible.

But Michael was in a cheerful mood and took no notice.

"Wednesday!" he shouted, banging his spoon on the table. "That's the day Jane was born. Wednesday's child is full of woe. That's why she has to have porridge instead of rice," he said naughtily.

Jane frowned and kicked at him under the table. But he swung his legs aside and laughed.

"Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace!" He chanted. "That's true, too. The Twins are full of grace and they were born on a Tuesday. And I'm Monday — fair of face."

Jane laughed scornfully.

"I am," he insisted. "I heard Mrs. Brill say so. She told Ellen I was as handsome as half-a-crown."

"Well, that's not very handsome," said Jane. "Besides, your nose turns up."

Michael looked at her reproachfully. And again Jane felt surprised at herself. At any other time she would have agreed with him, for she thought Michael a very good-looking little boy. But now she said cruelly,

"Yes, and your toes turn in. Bandy-legs! Bandy-legs!"

Michael rushed at her.

"That will be enough from you!" said Mary Poppins, looking angrily at Jane. "And if any body in this house is a beauty it's—" She paused and glanced with a satisfied smile at her own reflection in the mirror.

"Who?" demanded Michael and Jane together.

"Nobody of the name of Banks!" retorted Mary Poppins. "So there!"

Michael looked across at Jane as he always did when Mary Poppins made one of her curious remarks. But though she felt his look she pretended not to notice. She turned away and took her paint-box from the toy-cupboard.

"Won't you play trains?" asked Michael, trying to be friendly.

"No, I won't. I want to be by myself."

"Well, darlings, and how are you all this morning?"

Mrs. Banks came running into the room and kissed them hurriedly. She was always so busy that she never had time to walk.

"Michael," she said, "you must have some new slippers — your toes are coming out at the top. Mary Poppins, John's curls will have to come off, I'm afraid. Barbara, my pet, don't suck your thumb! Jane, run downstairs and ask Mrs. Brill not to ice the plum cake, I want a plain one."

There they were again, breaking into her day! As soon as she began to do anything they made her stop and do something else.

"Oh, Mother, must I? Why can't Michael?"

Mrs. Banks looked surprised.

"But I thought you liked helping! And Michael always forgets the message. Besides, you're the eldest. Run along."

She went downstairs as slowly as she could. She hoped she would be so late with the message that Mrs. Brill would have already iced the cake.

And all the time she felt astonished at the way she was behaving. It was as if there was another person inside her — somebody with a very bad temper and an ugly face — who was making her feel cross.

She gave the message to Mrs. Brill and was disappointed to find that she was in plenty of time.

"Well, that'll save a penn'orth of trouble anyway." Mrs. Brill remarked.

"And, Dearie," she went on, "you might just slip out into the garden and tell that Robertson he hasn't done the knives. My legs are bad and they're my only pair."

"I can't. I'm busy."

It was Mrs. Brill's turn to look surprised.

"Ah, be a kind girl, then — it's all I can do to stand, let alone walk!"

Jane sighed. Why couldn't they leave her alone? She kicked the kitchen door shut and dawdled out into the garden.

Robertson Ay was asleep on the path with his head on the watering-can. His lank hair rose and fell as he snored. It was Robertson Ay's special gift that he could sleep anywhere and at any time. In fact, he preferred sleeping to waking. And, usually, whenever they could, Jane and Michael prevented him from being found out. But to-day was different. The bad-tempered person inside her didn't care a bit what happened to Robertson Ay.

"I hate everybody!" she said, and rapped sharply on the watering-can.

Robertson Ay sat up with a start.

"Help! Murder! Fire!" he cried, waving his arms wildly.

Then he rubbed his eyes and saw Jane.

"Oh, it's only you!" he said, in a disappointed voice as if he had hoped for something more exciting.

"You're to go and do the knives at once," she ordered.

Robertson Ay got slowly to his feet and shook himself.

"Ah," he said sadly, "it's always something. If it's not one thing, it's another. I ought to be resting. I never get a moment's peace."

"Yes, you do!" said Jane cruelly. "You get nothing but peace. You're always asleep."

A hurt, reproachful look came over Robertson Ay's face, and at any other time it would have made her feel ashamed. But to-day she wasn't a bit sorry.

"Saying such things!" said Robertson Ay sadly. "And you the eldest and all. I wouldn't have thought it — not if I'd done nothing but think for the rest of my life."

And he gave her a sorrowful glance and shuffled slowly away to the kitchen.

She wondered if he would ever forgive her. And, as if in reply, the sulky creature inside her said, "I don't care if he doesn't!"

She tossed her head and went slowly back to the Nursery dragging her sticky hands along the fresh white wall because she had always been told not to.

Mary Poppins was flicking her feather duster round the furniture.

"Off to a funeral?" she enquired as Jane appeared.

Jane looked sulky and did not answer.

"I know somebody who's looking for Trouble. And he that seeks shall find!"

"I don't care!"

"Don't Care was made care! Don't Care was hung!" jeered Mary Poppins, putting the duster away.

"And now—" she looked warningly at Jane. "I am going to have my dinner. You are to look after the little ones and if I hear One Word—" She did not finish the sentence but she gave a long threatening sniff as she went out of the room.

John and Barbara ran to Jane and caught her hands. But she uncurled their fingers and crossly pushed them away.

"I wish I were an only child," she said bitterly.

"Why don't you run away," suggested Michael. "Somebody might adopt you."

Jane looked up, startled and surprised.

"But you'd miss me!"

"No, I wouldn't," he said stoutly. "Not if you're always going to be cross. Besides, then I could have your paint-box."

"No, you couldn't," she said jealously. "I'd take it with me."

And, just to show him that the paint-box was hers and not his, she got out the brushes and the painting-book and spread them on the floor.

"Paint the clock," said Michael helpfully.

"No."

"Well, the Royal Doulton Bowl."

Jane glanced up. The three little boys were racing over the field inside the green rim of the bowl. At any other time she would have liked to paint them but to-day she was not going to be pleasant or obliging.

"I won't. I will paint what I want."

And she began to make a picture of herself, quite alone, brooding over her eggs.

Michael and John and Barbara sat on the floor watching.

Jane was so interested in her eggs that she almost forgot her bad temper.

Michael leaned forward. "Why not put in a hen — just there!"

He pointed to a spare white patch, brushing against John with his arm. Over went John, falling sideways and upsetting the cup with his foot. The coloured water splashed out and flooded the picture.

With a cry Jane sprang to her feet.

"Oh, I can't bear it. You great Clumsy! You've spoilt everything!"

And, rushing at Michael, she punched him so violently that he, too, toppled over and crashed down on top of John. A squeal of pain and terror broke from the Twins, and above their cries rose Michael's voice wailing "My head is broken! What shall I do? My head is broken!" over and over again.

"I don't care, I don't care!" shouted Jane. "You wouldn't leave me alone and you've spoilt my picture. I hate you, I hate you, I hate—!"

The door burst open.

Mary Poppins surveyed the scene with furious eyes.

"What did I say to you?" she enquired of Jane in a voice so quiet that it was terrible. "That if I heard One Word — and now look what I find! A nice party you'll have at Miss Lark's, I don't think! Not one step will you go out of this room this afternoon or I'm a Chinaman."

"I don't want to go. I'd rather stay here." Jane put her hands behind her back and sauntered away. She did not feel a bit sorry.

"Very good."

Mary Poppins voice was gentle but there was something very frightening in it.

Jane watched her dressing the others for the party. And when they were ready Mary Poppins took her best hat out of a brown-paper bag and set it on her head at a very smart angle. She clipped her gold locket round her neck and over it wound the red-and-white checked scarf Mrs. Banks had given her. At one end was stitched a white label marked with a large M.P., and Mary Poppins smiled at herself in the mirror as she tucked the label out of sight.

Then she took her parrot-handled umbrella from the cupboard, popped it under her arm and hurried the little ones down the stairs.

"Now you'll have time to think!" she remarked tartly, and, with a loud sniff, shut the door behind her.

For a long time Jane sat staring in front of her. She tried to think about her seven eggs. But somehow they didn't interest her any more.

What were they doing now, at Miss Lark's? she wondered. Playing with Miss Lark's dogs, perhaps, and listening to Miss Lark telling them that Andrew had a wonderful pedigree but that Willoughby was half an Airedale and half a Retriever and the worst half of both. And presently they would all, even the dogs, have chocolate biscuits and walnut cake for tea.

"Oh, dear!"

The thought of all she was missing stirred angrily inside Jane and when she remembered it was all her own fault she felt crosser than ever.

Tick-tack! Tick-tock! said the clock loudly.

"Oh, be quiet!" cried Jane furiously, and picking up her paint-box she hurled it across the room.

It crashed against the glass face of the clock and, glancing off, clattered down upon the Royal Doulton Bowl.

Crrrrrrack! The Bowl toppled sideways against the clock.

Oh! Oh! What had she done?

Jane shut her eyes, not daring to look and see.

"I say — that hurt!"

A clear reproachful voice sounded in the room.

Jane started and opened her eyes.

"Jane!" said the voice again. "That was my knee!"

She turned her head quickly. There was nobody in the room.

She ran to the door and opened it. Still nobody!

Then somebody laughed.

"Here, silly!" said the voice again. "Up here!"

She looked up at the mantel-piece. Beside the clock lay the Royal Doulton Bowl with a large crack running right across it and, to her surprise, Jane saw that one of the painted boys had dropped the reins and was bending down holding his knee with both hands. The other two had turned and were looking at him sympathetically.

"But—" began Jane, half to herself and half to the unknown voice. "I don't understand." The boy in the Bowl lifted his head and smiled at her.

"Don't you? No, I suppose you don't. I've noticed that you and Michael often don't understand the simplest things — do they?"

He turned, laughing, to his brothers.

"No," said one of them, "not even how to keep the Twins quiet!"

"Nor the proper way to draw bird's eggs — she's made them all wriggly," said the other.

"How do you know about the Twins — and the eggs?" said Jane, flushing.

"Gracious!" said the first boy. "You don't think we could have watched you all this time without knowing everything that happens in this room! We can't see into the Night-Nursery, of course, or the bath-room. What coloured tiles has it?"

"Pink," said Jane.

"Ours has blue-and-white. Would you like to see it?"

Jane hesitated. She hardly knew what to reply, she was so astonished.

"Do come! William and Everard will be your horses, if you like, and I'll carry the whip and run alongside. I'm Valentine, in case you don't know. We're Triplets. And, of course, there's Christina."

"Where's Christina?" Jane searched the Bowl. But she saw only the green meadow and a little wood of alders and Valentine, William and Everard standing together.

"Come and see!" said Valentine persuasively, holding out his hand. "Why should the others have all the fun? You come with us — into the Bowl!"

That decided her. She would show Michael that he and the Twins were not the only ones who could go to a party. She would make them jealous and sorry for treating her so badly.

"All right," she said, putting out her hand. "I'll come!"

Valentine's hand closed round her wrist and pulled her towards the Bowl. And, suddenly, she was no longer in the cool Day-Nursery but out in a wide sunlit meadow, and instead of the ragged nursery carpet, a springing turf of grass and daisies was spread beneath her feet.

"Hooray!" said Valentine, William and Everard, dancing round her. She noticed that Valentine was limping.

"Oh," said Jane. "I forgot! Your knee!"

He smiled at her. "Never mind. It was the crack that did it. I know you didn't mean to hurt me!"

Jane took out her handkerchief and bound it round his knee.

"That's better!" he said politely, and put the reins into her hand.

William and Everard, tossing their heads and snorting, flew off across the meadow with Jane jingling the reins behind them.

Beside her, one foot heavy and one foot light, because of his knee, ran Valentine.

And as he ran, he sang—

"My love, thou art a nosegay sweet,

Keep close to me, please!" said Mary Poppins, stepping out of the Bus and putting up her umbrella, for it was raining heavily.

Jane and Michael scrambled out after her.

"If I keep close to you the drips from your umbrella run down my neck," complained Michael.

"Don't blame me, then, if you get lost and have to ask a Policeman!" snapped Mary Poppins, as she neatly avoided a puddle.

She paused outside the Chemist's shop at the corner so that she could see herself reflected in the three gigantic bottles in the window. She could see a Green Mary Poppins, a Blue Mary Poppins and a Red Mary Poppins all at once. And each one of them was carrying a brand-new leather hand-bag with brass knobs on it.

Mary Poppins looked at herself in the three bottles and smiled a pleased and satisfied smile. She spent some minutes changing the hand-bag from her right hand to her left, trying it in every possible position to see how it looked best. Then she decided that, after all, it was most effective when tucked under her arm. So she left it there.

Jane and Michael stood beside her, not daring to say anything but glancing across at each other and sighing inside themselves. And from two points of her parrot-handled umbrella the rain trickled uncomfortably down the backs of their necks.

"Now then — don't keep me waiting!" said Mary Poppins crossly, turning away from the Green, Blue and Red reflections of herself. Jane and Michael exchanged glances. Jane signalled to Michael to keep quiet. She shook her head and made a face at him. But he burst out—

"We weren't. It was you keeping us waiting—!"

"Silence!"

Michael did not dare to say any more. He and Jane trudged along, one on either side of Mary Poppins. Sometimes they had to run to keep up with her long, swift strides. And sometimes they had to wait about, standing first on one leg and then on the other, while she peered into a window to make sure the hand-bag looked as nice as she thought it did.

The rain poured down, dancing from the top of the umbrella on to Jane's and Michael's hats. Under her arm Jane carried the Royal Doulton Bowl wrapped carefully in two pieces of paper. They were taking it to Mary Poppins' cousin, Mr. Turvy, whose business, she had told Mrs. Banks, was mending things.

"Well," Mrs. Banks had said, rather doubtfully, "I hope he will do it satisfactorily, for until it is mended I shall not be able to look my Great-Aunt Caroline in the face."

Great-Aunt Caroline had given Mrs. Banks the bowl when Mrs. Banks was only three, and it was well-known that if it were broken Great-Aunt Caroline would make one of her famous scenes.

"Members of my family, ma'am," Mary Poppins had retorted with a sniff, "always give satisfaction."

And she had looked so fierce that Mrs. Banks felt quite uncomfortable and had to sit down and ring for a cup of tea.

Swish!

There was Jane, right in the middle of a puddle.

"Look where you're going, please!" snapped Mary Poppins, shaking her umbrella and tossing the drips over Jane and Michael. "This rain is enough to break your heart."

"If it did, could Mr. Turvy mend it?" enquired Michael. He was interested to know if Mr. Turvy could mend all broken things or only certain kinds. "Could he, Mary Poppins?"

"One more word," said Mary Poppins, "and Back Home you go!"

"I only asked," said Michael sulkily.

"Then don't!"

Mary Poppins, with an angry sniff, turned the corner smartly and, opening an old iron gate, knocked at the door of a small tumble-down building.

"Tap-tap-tappity-tap!" The sound of the knocker echoed hollowly through the house.

"Oh, dear," Jane whispered to Michael, "how awful if he's out!"

But at that moment heavy footsteps were heard tramping towards them, and with a loud rattle the door opened.

A round, red-faced woman, looking more like two apples placed one on top of the other than a human being, stood in the doorway. Her straight hair was scraped into a knob at the top of her head and her thin mouth had a cross and peevish expression.

"Well!" she said, staring. "It's you or I'm a Dutchman!"

She did not seem particularly pleased to see Mary Poppins. Nor did Mary Poppins seem particularly pleased to see her.

"Is Mr. Turvy in?" she enquired, without taking any notice of the round woman's remark.

"Well," said the round woman in an unfriendly voice, "I wouldn't be certain. He may be or he may not. It's all a matter of how you look at it."

Mary Poppins stepped through the door and peered about her.

"That's his hat, isn't it?" she demanded, pointing to an old felt hat that hung on a peg in the hall.

"Well, it is, of course — in a manner of speaking." The round woman admitted the fact unwillingly.

"Then he's in," said Mary Poppins. "No member of my family ever goes out without a hat. They're much too respectable."

"Well, all I can tell you is what he said to me this morning," said the round woman. 'Miss Tartlet,' he said, 'I may be in this afternoon and I may not. It is quite impossible to tell.' That's what he said. But you'd better go up and see for yourself. I'm not a mountaineer."

The round woman glanced down at her round body and shook her head. Jane and Michael could easily understand that a person of her size and shape would not want to climb up and down Mr. Turvy's narrow rickety stairs very often.

Mary Poppins sniffed.

"Follow me, please!" she snapped the words at Jane and Michael, and they ran after her up the creaking stairs.

Miss Tartlet stood in the hall watching them with a superior smile on her face.

At the top landing Mary Poppins knocked on the door with the head of her umbrella. There was no reply. She knocked again — louder this time. Still there was no answer.

"Cousin Arthur!" she called through the key-hole. "Cousin Arthur, are you in?"

"No, I'm out!" came a far-away voice from within.

"How can he be out? I can hear him!" whispered Michael to Jane.

"Cousin Arthur!" Mary Poppins rattled the door-handle. "I know you're in."

"No, no, I'm not," came the far-away voice. "I'm out, I tell you. It's the Second Monday!"

"Oh, dear — I'd forgotten!" said Mary Poppins, and with an angry movement she turned the handle and flung open the door.

At first all that Jane and Michael could see was a large room that appeared to be quite empty except for a carpenter's bench at one end. Piled upon this was a curious collection of articles — china dogs with no noses, wooden horses that had lost their tails, chipped plates, broken dolls, knives without handles, stools with only two legs — everything in the world, it seemed, that could possibly want mending.

Round the walls of the room were shelves reaching from floor to ceiling and these, too, were crowded with cracked china, broken glass and shattered toys.

But there was no sign anywhere of a human being.

"Oh," said Jane in a disappointed voice. "He is out, after all!"

But Mary Poppins had darted across the room to the window.

"Come in at once, Arthur! Out in the rain like that, and you with bronchitis the winter before last!"

And to their amazement Jane and Michael saw her grasp a long leg that hung across the window-sill and pull in from the outer air a tall, thin, sad-looking man with a long drooping moustache.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Mary Poppins crossly, keeping a firm hold of Mr. Turvy with one hand while she shut the window with the other. "We've brought you some important work to do and here you are behaving like this."

"Well, I can't help it," said Mr. Turvy apologetically, mopping his sad eyes with a large handkerchief. "I told you it was the Second Monday."

"What does that mean?" asked Michael, staring at Mr. Turvy with interest.

"Ah," said Mr. Turvy turning to him and shaking him limply by the hand. "It's kind of you to enquire. Very kind. I do appreciate it, really." He paused to wipe his eyes again. "You see," he went on, "it's this way. On the Second Monday of the month everything goes wrong with me."

"What kind of things?" asked Jane, feeling very sorry for Mr. Turvy but also very curious.

"Well, take to-day!" said Mr. Turvy. "This happens to be the Second Monday of the month. And because I want to be in — having so much work to do — I'm automatically out. And if I wanted to be out, sure enough, I'd be in."

"I see," said Jane, though she really found it very difficult to understand. "So that's why—?"

"Yes," Mr. Turvy nodded. "I heard you coming up the stairs and I did so long to be in. So, of course, as soon as that happened — there I was — out! And I'd be out still if Mary Poppins weren't holding on to me." He sighed heavily.

"Of course, it's not like this all the time. Only between the hours of three and six — but even then it can be very awkward."

"I'm sure it can," said Jane sympathetically.

"And it's not as if it was only In and Out—" Mr.

Turvy went on miserably. "It's other things, too. If I try to go up stairs, I find myself running down. I have only to turn to the right and I find myself going to the left. And I never set off for the West without immediately finding myself in the East."

Mr. Turvy blew his nose.

"And worst of all," he continued, his eyes filling again with tears, "my whole nature alters. To look at me now, you'd hardly believe I was really a happy and satisfied sort of person — would you?"

And, indeed, Mr. Turvy looked so melancholy and distressed that it seemed quite impossible he could ever have been cheerful and contented.

"But why? Why?" demanded Michael, staring up at him.

Mr. Turvy shook his head sadly.

"Ah!" he said solemnly. "I should have been a girl."

Jane and Michael stared at him and then at each other. What could he mean?

"You see," Mr. Turvy explained, "my Mother wanted a girl and it turned out, when I arrived, that I was a boy. So I went wrong right from the beginning — from the day I was born you might say. And that was the Second Monday of the month."

Mr. Turvy began to weep again, sobbing gently into his handkerchief.

Jane patted his hand kindly.

He seemed pleased, though he did not smile.

"And, of course," he went on, "it's very bad for my work. Look up there!"

He pointed to one of the larger shelves on which were standing a row of hearts in different colours and sizes, each one cracked or chipped or entirely broken.

"Now, those," said Mr. Turvy, "are wanted in a great hurry. You don't know how cross people get if I don't send their hearts back quickly. They make more fuss about them than anything else. And I simply daren't touch them till after six o'clock. They'd be ruined — like those things!"

He nodded to another shelf. Jane and Michael looked and saw that it was piled high with things that had been wrongly mended. A china shepherdess had been separated from her china shepherd and her arms were glued about the neck of a brass lion; a toy sailor whom somebody had wrenched from his boat, was firmly stuck to a willow-pattern plate; and in the boat, with his trunk curled round the mast and fixed there with sticking-plaster, was a grey-flannel elephant. Broken saucers were riveted together the wrong way of the pattern and the leg of a wooden horse was firmly attached to a silver Christening mug.

"You see?" said Mr. Turvy hopelessly, with a wave of his hand.

Jane and Michael nodded. They felt very, very sorry for Mr. Turvy.

"Well, never mind that now," Mary Poppins broke in impatiently. "What is important is this Bowl. We've brought it to be mended."

She took the Bowl from Jane and, still holding Mr. Turvy with one hand, she undid the string with the other.

"H'm," said Mr. Turvy. "Royal Doulton. A bad crack. Looks as though somebody had thrown something at it."

Jane felt herself blushing as he said that.

"Still," he went on, "if it were any other day, I could mend it. But to-day—" he hesitated.

"Nonsense, it's quite simple. You've only to put a rivet here — and here — and here!"

Mary Poppins pointed to the crack and as she did so she dropped Mr. Turvy's hand.

Immediately he went spinning through the air, turning over and over like a Catherine wheel.

"Oh!" cried Mr. Turvy. "Why did you let go? Poor me, I'm off again!"

"Quick — shut the door!" cried Mary Poppins. And Jane and Michael rushed across the room and closed the door just before Mr. Turvy reached it. He banged against it and bounced away again, turning gracefully, with a very sad look on his face, through the air.

Suddenly he stopped but in a very curious position. Instead of being right-side up he was upside down and standing on his head.

"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Turvy, giving a fierce kick with his feet, "Dear, dear!"

But his feet would not go down to the floor. They remained waving gently in the air.

"Well," Mr. Turvy remarked in his melancholy voice. "I suppose I should be glad it's no worse. This is certainly better — though not much better — than hanging outside in the rain with nothing to sit on and no overcoat. You see," he looked at Jane and Michael, "I want so much to be right-side up and so — just my luck! — I'm upside down. Well, well, never mind. I ought to be used to it by now. I've had forty-five years of it. Give me the Bowl."

Michael ran and took the Bowl from Mary Poppins and put it on the floor by Mr. Turvy's head. And as he did so he felt a curious thing happening to him. The floor seemed to be pushing his feet away from it and tilting them into the air.

"Oh!" he cried. "I feel so funny. Something most extraordinary is happening to me!"

For by now he, too, was turning Catherine wheels through the air, and flying up and down the room until he landed head-first on the floor beside Mr. Turvy.

"Strike me pink!" said Mr. Turvy in a surprised voice, looking at Michael out of the corner of his eye. "I never knew it was catching. You, too? Well, of all the — Hi! Hi, I say! Steady there! You'll knock the goods off the shelves, if you're not careful, and I shall be charged for breakages. What are you doing?"

He was now addressing Jane whose feet had suddenly swept off the carpet and were turning above her head in the giddiest manner. Over and over she went — first her head and then her feet in the air — until at last she came down on the other side of Mr. Turvy and found herself standing on her head.

"You know," said Mr. Turvy staring at her solemnly. "This is all very odd. I never knew it to happen to any one else before. Upon my word, I never did. I do hope you don't mind."

Jane laughed, turning her head towards him and waving her legs in the air.

"Not a bit, thank you. I've always wanted to stand on my head and I've never been able to do it before. It's very comfortable."

"H'm," said Mr. Turvy dolefully. "I'm glad somebody likes it. I can't say I feel like that."

"I do," said Michael. "I wish I could stay like this all my life. Everything looks so nice and different."

And, indeed, everything was different. From their strange position on the floor Jane and Michael could see that the articles on the carpenter's bench were all upside down — china dogs, broken dolls, wooden stools — all standing on their heads.

"Look!" whispered Jane to Michael. He turned his head as much as he could. And there, creeping out of a hole in the wainscoting, came a small mouse. It skipped, head over heels, into the middle of the room and, turning upside down, balanced daintily on its nose in front of them.

They watched it for a moment, very surprised. Then Michael suddenly said, "Jane, look out of the window!"

She turned her head carefully for it was rather difficult and saw to her astonishment that everything outside the room, as well as everything in it, was different. Out in the street the houses were standing on their heads, their chimneys on the pavement and their door-steps in the air and out of the door-steps came little curls of smoke. In the distance a church had turned turtle and was balancing rather top-heavily on the point of its steeple. And the rain, which had always seemed to them to come down from the sky, was pouring up from the earth in a steady soaking shower.

"Oh," said Jane. "How beautifully strange it all is! It's like being in another world. I'm so glad we came to-day."

"Well," said Mr. Turvy, mournfully, "you're very kind, I must say. You do know how to make allowances. Now, what about this Bowl?"

He stretched out his hand to take it but at that moment the Bowl gave a little skip and turned upside down. And it did it so quickly and so funnily that Jane and Michael could not help laughing.

"This," said Mr. Turvy miserably, "is no laughing matter for me, I assure you. I shall have to put the rivets in wrong way up — and if they show, they show. I can't help it."

And taking his tools out of his pocket he mended the Bowl, weeping quietly as he worked.

"Humph!" said Mary Poppins, stooping to pick it up. "Well, that's done. And now we'll be going."

At that Mr. Turvy began to sob pitifully.

"That's right, leave me!" he said bitterly. "Don't stay and help me keep my mind off my misery. Don't hold out a friendly hand. I'm not worth it. I'd hoped you might all favour me by accepting some refreshment. There's a plum cake in a tin up there on the top shelf. But, there — I'd no right to expect it. You've your own lives to live and I shouldn't ask you to stay and brighten mine. This isn't my lucky day—"

He fumbled for his pocket-handkerchief.

"Well—" began Mary Poppins, pausing in the middle of buttoning her gloves.

"Oh, do stay, Mary Poppins, do!" cried Jane and Michael together, dancing eagerly on their heads.

"You could reach the cake if you stood on a chair!" said Jane, helpfully.

Mr. Turvy laughed for the first time. It was rather a melancholy sound, but still, it was a laugh.

"She'll need no chair!" he said, gloomily chuckling in his throat. "She'll get what she wants and in the way she wants it—she will."

And at that moment, before the children's astonished eyes, Mary Poppins did a curious thing. She raised herself stiffly on her toes and balanced there for a moment. Then, very slowly, and in a most dignified manner she turned seven Catherine wheels through the air. Over and over, her skirts clinging neatly about her ankles, her hat set tidily on her head, she wheeled up to the top of the shelf, took the cake and wheeled down again, landing neatly on her head in front of Mr. Turvy and the children.

"Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" shouted Michael delightedly. But from the floor Mary Poppins gave him such a look that he rather wished he had remained quiet and said nothing.

"Thank you, Mary," said Mr. Turvy sadly, not seeming at all surprised.

"There!" snapped Mary Poppins. "That's the last thing I shall do for you to-day."

She put the cake-tin down in front of Mr. Turvy.

Immediately, with a little wobbly roll, it turned upside down. And each time Mr. Turvy turned it right-side up it turned over again.

"Ah," he said despairingly, "I might have known it! Nothing is right to-day — not even the cake-tin. We shall have to cut it open from the bottom. I'll just ask—"

Mary Poppins landed neatly on her head in front of Mr. Turvy and the children

And he stumbled on his head to the door and shouted through the crack between it and the floor.

"Miss Tartlet! Miss Tartlet! I'm so sorry to trouble you, but could you — would you — do you mind bringing a tin-opener?"

Far away downstairs Miss Tartlet's voice could be heard grimly protesting.

"Tush!" said a loud croaky voice inside the room. "Tush and nonsense! Don't bother the woman! Let Polly do it! Pretty Polly! Clever Polly!"

Turning their heads, Jane and Michael were surprised to see that the voice came from Mary Poppins' parrot-headed umbrella, which was at that moment Catherine-wheeling towards the cake. It landed head-downwards on the tin and in two seconds had cut a large hole in it with its beak.

"There!" squawked the parrot-head conceitedly, "Polly did it! Handsome Polly!" And a happy self-satisfied smile spread over its beak as it settled head-downwards on the floor beside Mary Poppins.

"Well, that's very kind, very kind," said Mr. Turvy in his gloomy voice, as the dark crust of the cake became visible.

He took a knife out of his pocket and cut a slice. He started violently, and peered at the cake more closely. Then he looked reproachfully at Mary Poppins.

"This is your doing, Mary! Don't deny it. That cake, when the tin was last open, was a plum cake and now—"

"Sponge is much more digestible," said Mary Poppins, primly. "Eat slowly please. You're not starving savages!" she snapped, passing a small slice each to Jane and Michael.

"That's all very well," grumbled Mr. Turvy bitterly, eating his slice in two bites. "But I do like a plum or two, I must admit. Ah, well, this is not my lucky day!" He broke off as somebody rapped loudly on the door. "Come in!" called Mr. Turvy.

Miss Tartlet, looking, if anything, rounder than ever and panting from her climb up the stairs, burst into the room.

"The tin-opener, Mr. Turvy—" she began grimly. Then she paused and stared.

"My!" she said, opening her mouth very wide and letting the tin-opener slip from her hand. "Of all the sights I ever did see this is the one I wouldn't have expected!"

She took a step forward, gazing at the four pairs of waving feet with an expression of deep disgust.

"Upside down — the lot of you — like flies on a ceiling! And you supposed to be respectable human creatures. This is no place for a lady of my standing. I shall leave the house this instant, Mr. Turvy. Please note that!"

She flounced angrily towards the door.

But even as she went her great billowing skirts blew against her round legs and lifted her from the floor.

A look of agonised astonishment spread over her face. She flung out her hands wildly.

"Mr. Turvy! Mr. Turvy, Sir! Catch me! Hold me down! Help! Help!" cried Miss Tartlet as she, too, began a sweeping Catherine wheel.

"Oh, oh, the world's turning turtle! What shall I do? Help! Help!" she shrieked, as she went over again.

But as she turned a curious change came over her. Her round face lost its peevish expression and began to shine with smiles. And Jane and Michael, with a start of surprise, saw her straight hair crinkle into a mass of little curls and ringlets as she whirled and twirled through the room. When she spoke again her gruff voice was as sweet as honeysuckle.

"What can be happening to me?" cried Miss Tartlet's new voice. "I feel like a ball! A bouncing ball! Or perhaps a balloon! Or a cherry tart!" She broke into a peal of happy laughter.

"Dear me, how cheerful I am!" she trilled, turning and circling through the air. "I never enjoyed my life before but now I feel I shall never stop. It's the loveliest sensation. I shall write home to my sister about it, to my cousins and uncles and aunts. I shall tell them that the only proper way to live is upside down, upside down, upside down—"

And, chanting happily, Miss Tartlet went whirling round and round. Jane and Michael watched her with delight and Mr. Turvy watched her with surprise, for he had never known Miss Tartlet to be anything but peevish and unfriendly.

"Very odd! Very odd!" said Mr. Turvy to himself, shaking his head as he stood on it.

Another knock sounded at the door.

"Anyone here name of Turvy?" enquired a voice, and the Post Man appeared in the doorway holding a letter. He stood staring at the sight that met his eyes.

"Holy smoke!" he remarked, pushing his cap to the back of his head. "I must-a come to the wrong place. I'm looking for a decent quiet gentleman called Turvy. I've got a letter for him. Besides, I promised my wife I'd be home early and I've broken my word and I thought—"

"Ha!" said Mr. Turvy from the floor. "A broken promise is one of the things I can't mend. Not my line. Sorry!"

The Post Man stared down at him.

"Am I dreaming or am I not?" he muttered. "It seems to me I've got into a whirling, twirling, skirling company of lunatics!"

"Give me the letter, dear Post Man! Give the letter to Topsy Tartlet and turn upside down with me. Mr. Turvy, you see, is engaged!"

Miss Tartlet, wheeling towards the Post Man, took his hand in hers. And as she touched him his feet slithered off the floor into the air. Then away they went, the Post Man and Miss Tartlet, hand in hand and over and over, like a pair of bouncing footballs. "How lovely it is!" cried Miss Tartlet happily. "Oh, Post Man dear, we're seeing life for the first time. And such a pleasant view of it! Over we go! Isn't it wonderful?"

"Yes!" shouted Jane and Michael, as they joined the wheeling dance of the Post Man and Miss Tartlet.

And presently Mr. Turvy, too, joined in, awkwardly turning and tossing through the air. Mary Poppins and her umbrella followed, going over and over evenly and neatly and with the utmost dignity. There they all were, spinning and wheeling, with the world going up and down outside and the happy cries of Miss Tartlet echoing through the room.

"The whole of the Town

But why must we go for a walk with Ellen?" grumbled Michael, slamming the gate. "I don't like her. Her nose is too red."

"Sh!" said Jane. "She'll hear you."

Ellen, who was wheeling the perambulator, turned round.

"You're a cruel, unkind boy, Master Michael. I'm only doing my duty, I'm sure! It's no pleasure to me to be going for a walk in this heat — so there!"

She blew her red nose on a green handkerchief.

"Then why do you go?" Michael demanded.

"Because Mary Poppins is busy. So come along, there's a good boy, and I'll buy you a pennorth of peppermints."

"I don't want peppermints," muttered Michael. "I want Mary Poppins."

Plop-plop. Plop-plop. Ellen's feet marched slowly and heavily along the Lane.

"I can see a rainbow through every chink of my hat," said Jane.

"I can't," said Michael crossly. "I can only see my silk lining."

Ellen stopped at the corner, looking anxiously for traffic.

"Want any help?" enquired the Policeman, sauntering up to her.

"Well," said Ellen, blushing, "if you could take us across the road, I'd be much obliged. What with a bad cold, and four children to look after, I don't know if I'm on my head or my feet." She blew her nose again.

"But you must know! You've only got to look!" said Michael thinking how Perfectly Awful Ellen was.

Step along, please!" said Mary Poppins, pushing the perambulator, with the Twins at one end of it and Annabel at the other, towards her favourite seat in the Park.

It was a green one, quite near the Lake, and she chose it because she could bend sideways, every now and again, and see her own reflection in the water. The sight of her face gleaming between two water-lilies always gave her a pleasant feeling of satisfaction and contentment.

Michael trudged behind.

"We're always stepping along," he grumbled to Jane in a whisper, taking care that Mary Poppins did not hear him, "but we never seem to get anywhere."

Mary Poppins turned round and glared at him.

"Put your hat on straight!"

Michael tilted his hat over his eyes. It had "H.M.S. Trumpeter" printed on the band and he thought it suited him very well.

But Mary Poppins was looking with contempt at them both.

"Humph!" she said. "You two look a picture, I must say! Stravaiging along like a couple of tortoises and no polish on your shoes."

"Well, it's Robertson Ay's Half-day," said Jane. "I suppose he didn't have time to do them before he went out."

"Tch, tch! Lazy, idle, Good-for-nothing — that's what he is. Always was and always will be!" Mary Poppins said, savagely pushing the perambulator up against her own green seat.

She lifted out the Twins, and tucked the shawl tightly around Annabel. She glanced at her sunlit reflection in the Lake and smiled in a superior way, straightening the new bow of ribbon at her neck. Then she took her bag of knitting from the perambulator.

"How do you know he's always been idle?" asked Jane. "Did you know Robertson Ay before you came here?"

"Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies!" said Mary Poppins priggishly, as she began to cast on stitches for a woollen vest for John.

"She never tells us anything!" Michael grumbled.

"I know!" sighed Jane.

But very soon they forgot about Robertson Ay and began to play Mr.-and-Mrs.-Banks-and-Their-Two-Children. Then they became Red Indians with John and Barbara for Squaws. And after that they changed into Tight-Rope-Walkers with the back of the green seat for a rope.

"Mind my hat—if you please!" said Mary Poppins. It was a brown one with a pigeon's feather stuck into the ribbon.

Michael went carefully, foot over foot, along the back of the seat. When he got to the end he took off his hat and waved it.

"Jane," he cried, "I'm the King of the Castle and you're the—"

"Stop, Michael!" she interrupted and pointed across the Lake. "Look over there!"

Along the path at the edge of the Lake came a tall, slim figure, curiously dressed. He wore stockings of red striped with yellow, a red-and-yellow tunic scalloped at the edges, and on his head was a large-brimmed red-and-yellow hat with a high peaked crown.

Jane and Michael watched with interest as he came towards them, moving with a lazy swaggering step, his hands in his pockets and his hat pulled down over his eyes.

He was whistling loudly and as he drew nearer they saw that the peaks of his tunic, and the brim of his hat, were edged with little bells that jingled musically as he moved. He was the strangest person they had ever seen and yet — there was something about him that seemed familiar.

"I think I've seen him before," said Jane, frowning and trying to remember.

"So have I. But I can't think where." Michael balanced on the back of the seat and stared.

Whistling and jingling, the curious figure slouched up to Mary Poppins and leaned against the perambulator.

"Day, Mary!" he said, putting a finger lazily to the brim of his hat. "And how are you keeping?"

Mary Poppins looked up from her knitting.

"None the better for your asking," she said, with a loud sniff.

Jane and Michael could not see the man's face for the brim of his hat was well pulled down, but from the way the bells jingled they knew he was laughing.

"Busy as usual, I see!" he remarked, glancing at the knitting. "But then, you always were, even at Court. If you weren't dusting the Throne you'd be making the King's bed, and if you weren't doing that you were polishing the Crown Jewels. I never knew such a one for work!"

"Well, it's more than anyone could say for you," said Mary Poppins crossly.

"Ah," laughed the Stranger, "that's just where you're wrong! I'm always busy. Doing nothing takes a great deal of time! All the time, in fact!"

Mary Poppins pursed up her lips and made no reply.

The Stranger gave an amused chuckle. "Well, I must be getting along." He said. "See you again some day!"

He brushed a finger along the bells of his hat and sauntered lazily away, whistling as he went.

Jane and Michael watched until he was out of sight.

"The Dirty Rascal!"

Mary Poppins' voice rapped out behind them, and they turned to find that she, too, was staring after the Stranger.

"Who was that man, Mary Poppins?" asked Michael, bouncing excitedly up and down on the seat.

"I've just told you," she snapped. "You said you were the King of the Castle — and you're not, not by any means! But that's the Dirty Rascal."

"You mean the one in the Nursery Rhyme?" demanded Jane breathlessly.

"But Nursery Rhymes aren't true, are they?" protested Michael, "And if they are, who is the King of the Castle."

"Hush!" said Jane, laying her hand on his arm.

Mary Poppins had put down her knitting and was gazing out across the Lake with a far-away look in her eyes.

Jane and Michael sat very still hoping, if they made no sound, she would tell them the whole story. The Twins huddled together at one end of the perambulator, solemnly staring at Mary Poppins. Annabel, at the other end, was sound asleep.

"The King of the Castle," began Mary Poppins, folding her hands over her ball of wool and gazing right through the children as though they were not there. "The King of the Castle lived in a country so far away that most people have never heard of it. Think as far as you can, and it's even further than that; think as high as you can, and it's higher than that; think as deep as you can, and it's even deeper.

"And," she said, "if I were to tell you how rich he was we'd be sitting here till next year and still be only half-way through the list of his treasures. He was enormously, preposterously, extravagantly rich. In fact, there was only one thing in the whole world that he did not possess.

"And that thing was wisdom."

And so Mary Poppins went on—

His land was full of gold mines, his people were polite and prosperous and generally splenderiferous. He had a good wife and four fat children — or perhaps it was five. He never could remember the exact number because his memory was so bad.

His Castle was made of silver and granite and his coffers were full of gold and the diamonds in his crown were as big as duck's eggs.

He had many marvellous cities and sailing-ships at sea. And for his right-hand-man he had a Lord High Chancellor who knew exactly What was What and What was Not and advised the King accordingly.

But the King had no wisdom. He was utterly and absolutely foolish and, what was more, he knew it! Indeed, he could hardly help knowing it, for everybody, from the Queen and the Lord High Chancellor downwards, was constantly reminding him of the fact. Even bus-conductors and engine-drivers and the people who served in shops could hardly refrain from letting the King know they knew he had no wisdom. They didn't dislike him, they merely felt a contempt for him.

It was not the King's fault that he was so stupid. He had tried and tried to learn wisdom ever since he was a boy. But, in the middle of his lessons, even when he was grown up, he would suddenly burst into tears and, wiping his eyes on his ermine train, would cry—

"I know I shall never be any good at it — never! So why nag at me?"

But still his teachers continued to make the effort. Professors came from all over the world to try to teach the King of the Castle something — even if it was only Twice-Times-Two or C-A-T cat. But none of them had the slightest effect on him.

Then the Queen had an idea.

"Let us," she said to the Lord High Chancellor, "offer a reward to the Professor who can teach the King a little wisdom! And if, at the end of a month, he has not succeeded, his head shall be cut off and spiked on the Castle gates as a warning to other Professors of what will happen if they fail."

And, as most of them were rather poor and the reward was a large money-prize, the Professors kept on coming and failing and losing hope, and also their heads. And the spikes of the Castle gates became rather crowded.

Things went from bad to worse. And at last the Queen said to the King—

"Ethelbert," (That was the King's private name) "I really think you had better leave the government of the Kingdom to me and the Lord High Chancellor, as we both know a good deal about everything!"

"But that wouldn't be fair!" said the King, protesting. "After all, it's my Kingdom!"

However, he gave in at last because he knew she was cleverer than he. But he so much resented being ordered about in his own Castle and having to use the bent sceptre because he always chewed the knob of the best one, that he went on receiving the Professors and trying to learn wisdom and weeping when he found he couldn't. He wept for their sakes as well as his own for it made him unhappy to see their heads on the gate.

Each new Professor arrived full of hope and assurance and began with some question that the last had not asked.

"What are six and seven, Your Majesty?" enquired a young and handsome Professor who had come from a great distance.

And the King, trying his hardest, thought for a moment. Then he leant forward eagerly and answered—

"Why, twelve, of course!"

"Tch, tch, tch!" said the Lord High Chancellor, standing behind the King's Chair.

The Professor groaned.

"Six and seven are thirteen, Your Majesty!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry! Try another question, please, Professor! I am sure I shall get the next one right."

"Well, then, what are five and eight?"

"Um — er — let me see! Don't tell me, it's just at the tip of my tongue. Yes! Five and eight are eleven!"

"Tch, tch, tch!" said the Lord High Chancellor.

"THIRTEEN," cried the young Professor hopelessly.

"But, my dear fellow, you just said that six and seven were thirteen, so how can five and eight be? There aren't two thirteens, surely?"

But the young Professor only shook his head and loosened his collar and went dejectedly away with the Executioner.

"Is there more than one thirteen, then?" asked the King nervously.

The Lord High Chancellor turned away in disgust.

"I'm sorry," said the King to himself. "I liked his face so much. It's a pity it has to go on the gate."

And after that he worked very hard at his Arithmetic, hoping that when the next Professor came, he would be able to give the right answers.

He would sit at the top of the Castle steps, just by the draw-bridge, with a book of Multiplication Tables on his knees, saying them over to himself. And while he was looking at the book everything went well but when he shut his eyes and tried to remember them everything went wrong.

"Seven ones are seven, seven twos are thirty-three, seven threes are forty-five—" he began one day. And when he found he was wrong he threw the book away in disgust and buried his head in his cloak.

"It's no good, it's no good! I shall never be wise!" he cried in despair.

Then, because he could not go on weeping for ever, he wiped his eyes and leant back in his golden chair. And as he did that he gave a little start of surprise. For a stranger had pushed past the sentry at the gate and was walking up the path that led to the Castle.

"Hullo," said the King, "who are you?" For he had no memory for faces.

"Well, if it comes to that," replied the Stranger, "Who are you?"

"I'm the King of the Castle," said the King, picking up the bent sceptre and trying to look important.

"And I'm the Dirty Rascal," was the reply.

The King opened his eyes wide with astonishment.

"Are you really, though? That's interesting! I'm very pleased to meet you. Do you know seven times seven?"

"No. Why should I?"

At that the King gave a great cry of delight and, running down the steps, embraced the Stranger.

"At last, at last!" cried the King, "I have found a friend. You shall live with me! What is mine shall be yours! We shall spend our lives together!"

"But, Ethelbert," protested the Queen, "this is only a Common Person. You cannot have him here."

"Your Majesty," said the Lord High Chancellor, sternly, "IT WOULD NOT DO."

But for once the King defied him.

"It will do very nicely!" he said royally. "Who is King here — you or I?" "Well, of course, in a manner of speaking, you are, as it were, Your Majesty, but—"

"Very well. Put this man in cap and bells and he can be my Fool!"

"Fool!" cried the Queen, wringing her hands. "Do we need any more of these?"

But the King did not answer. He flung his arm round the Stranger's neck and the two went dancing to the Castle door.

"You first!" said the King politely.

"No, you!" said the Stranger.

"Both together, then!" said the King generously, and they went in side by side.

And from that day the King made no attempt to learn his lessons. He made a pile of all his books and burnt them in the courtyard while he and his new friend danced round it singing—

"I'm the King of the Castle,

What, no pudding?" said Michael, as Mary Poppins, her arm full of plates, mugs and knives, began to lay the table for Nursery Tea.

She turned and looked at him fiercely.

"This," she snapped, "is my Evening Out. So you will eat bread and butter and strawberry-jam and be thankful. There's many a little boy would be glad to have it."

"I'm not," grumbled Michael. "I want rice-pudding with honey in it."

"You want! You want! You're always wanting. If it's not this it's that, and if it's not that it's the other. You'll ask for the Moon next."

He put his hands in his pockets and moved sulkily away to the window-seat. Jane was kneeling there, staring out at the bright, frosty sky. He climbed up beside her, still looking very cross.

"All right, then! I do ask for the Moon. So there!" He flung the words back at Mary Poppins. "But I know I shan't get it. Nobody ever gives me anything."

He turned hurriedly away from her angry glare.

"Jane," he said, "there's no pudding."

"Don't interrupt me, I'm counting!" said Jane, pressing her nose against the window-pane so that it was quite blunt and squashed at the tip.

"Counting what?" he asked, not very interested. His mind was full of rice-pudding and honey.

"Shooting stars. Look, there goes another. That's seven. And another! Eight. And one over the Park — that's nine!"

"O-o-h! And there's one going down Admiral Boom's chimney!" said Michael, sitting up suddenly and forgetting all about the pudding.

"And a little one — see! — streaking right across the Lane. Such frosty lights!" cried Jane. "Oh, how I wish we were out there! What makes stars shoot, Mary Poppins?"

"Do they come out of a gun?" enquired Michael.

Mary Poppins sniffed contemptuously.

"What do you think I am? An Encyclopædia? Everything from A to Z?" she demanded crossly. "Come and eat your teas, please!" She pushed them towards their chairs and pulled down the blind. "And No Nonsense. I'm in a hurry!"

And she made them eat so quickly that they were both afraid they would choke.

"Mayn't I have just one more piece?" asked Michael, stretching out his hand to the plate of bread-and-butter.

"You may not. You have already eaten more than is good for you. Take a ginger biscuit and go to bed."

"But—"

"But me no buts or you'll be sorry!" she flung at him sternly.

"I shall have indigestion, I know I shall," he said to Jane, but only in a whisper, for when Mary Poppins looked like that it was wiser not to make any remark at all. Jane took no notice. She was slowly eating her ginger biscuit and peering cautiously out at the frosty sky through a chink in the blind.

"Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen—"

"Did I or did I not say BED?" enquired the familiar voice behind them.

"All right, I'm just going! I'm just going, Mary Poppins!"

And they ran squealing to the Night-Nursery with Mary Poppins hurrying after them and looking Simply Awful.

Less than half-an-hour later Mary Poppins was tucking each one in tightly, pushing the sheets and blankets under the mattress with sharp furious little stabs.

"There!" she said, snapping the words between her lips. "That's all for tonight. And if I hear One Word—" She did not finish the sentence but her look said all that was necessary.

"There'll be Trouble!" said Michael, finishing it for her. But he whispered it under his breath to his blanket for he knew what would happen if he said it aloud. She whisked out of the room, her starched apron rustling and crackling, and shut the door with an angry click. They heard her light feet hurrying away down the stairs — Tap-tap, Tap-tap — from landing to landing.

"She's forgotten to light the night-light," said Michael, peering around the corner of his pillow. "She must be in a hurry. I wonder where she's going!"

"And she's left the blind up!" said Jane, sitting up in bed. "Hooray, now we can watch the shooting stars!"

The pointed roofs of Cherry Tree Lane were shiny with frost and the moonlight slid down the gleaming slopes and fell soundlessly into the dark gulfs between the houses. Everything glimmered and shone. The earth was as bright as the sky.

"Seventeen-Eighteen-Nineteen-Twenty—" said Jane, steadily counting as the stars shot down. As fast as one disappeared another came to take its place until it seemed that the whole sky was alive and dancing with the dazzle of shooting stars.

"It's like fireworks," said Michael. "Oh, look at that one! Or the Circus. Do you think they have circuses in Heaven, Jane?"

"I'm not sure!" said Jane doubtfully. "There's the Great Bear and the Little Bear, of course, and Taurus-the-Bull and Leo-the-Lion. But I don't know about a Circus."

"Mary Poppins would know," said Michael, nodding wisely.

"Yes, but she wouldn't tell," said Jane, turning again to the window. "Where was I? Was it Twenty-one? Oh, Michael, such a beauty — do you see?" She bounced excitedly up and down in her bed, pointing to the window.

A very bright star, larger than any they had yet seen, was shooting through the sky towards Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane. It was different from the others for, instead of leaping straight across the dark, it was turning over and over, curving through the air very curiously.

"Duck your head, Michael!" shouted Jane suddenly. "It's coming in here!"

They dived down into the blankets and burrowed their heads under the pillows.

"Do you think it's gone now?" came Michael's muffled voice presently. "I'm nearly smothercated."

"Of course I haven't gone!" A small clear voice answered him. "What do you take me for?"

Very surprised, Jane and Michael threw off the bed-clothes and sat up. There, at the edge of the window-sill, perched on its shiny tail and gleaming brightly at them, was the shooting star.

"Come on, you two! Be quick!" it said, gleaming frostily across the room.

Michael stared at it.

"But — I don't understand—" he began.

A bright, glittering, very small laugh sounded in the room.

"You never do, do you?" said the star.

"You mean — we're to come with you?" said Jane.

"Of course! And mind you wrap up. It's chilly!"

They sprang out of their beds and ran for overcoats.

"Got any money?" the star asked sharply.

"There's twopence in my coat pocket," said Jane doubtfully.

"Coppers? They'll be no good! Here, catch!" And with a little sizzling sound, as though a firework squib was going off, the star sent out a shower of sparks. Two of them shot right across the room and landed, one in Jane's hand and one in Michael's.

"Hurry, or we'll be late!"

The star streaked across the room, through the closed door and down the stairs, with Jane and Michael, tightly clasping their starry money, after it.

"Can I be dreaming I wonder?" said Jane to herself, as she hurried down Cherry Tree Lane.

"Follow!" cried the star as, at the end of the Lane, where the frosty sky seemed to come down to meet the pavement, it leapt into the air and disappeared.

"Follow! Follow!" came the voice from somewhere in the sky. "Just as you are, step on a star!"

Jane seized Michael's hand and raised her foot uncertainly from the pavement. To her surprise she found that the lowest star in the sky was easily within her reach. She stepped up, balancing carefully. The star seemed quite steady and solid.

"Come on, Michael!"

They hurried up the frosty sky, leaping over the gulfs between the stars.

"Follow!" cried the voice, far ahead of them. Jane paused and, glancing down, caught her breath to see how high they were. Cherry Tree Lane — indeed, the whole world — was as small and sparkly as a toy on a Christmas Tree.

"Are you giddy, Michael?" she said, springing on to a large flat star.

"N-o-o. Not if you hold my hand."

They paused. Behind them the great stairway of stars led down to earth, but before them there were no more to be seen, nothing but a thick blue patch of naked sky.

Michael's hand trembled in Jane's.

"W-w-what shall we do now?" he said, in a voice that tried not to sound frightened.

"Walk up! Walk up! Walk up and see the sights! Pay your money and take your choice! The two-Tailed Dragon or the Horse with Wings! Magical Marvels! Universal Wonders! Walk up! Walk up!"

A loud voice seemed to be shouting these words in their very ears. They stared about them. There was no sign of anybody.

"Step along everybody! Don't miss the Golden Bull and the Comical Clown! World-Famous Troupe of Performing Constellations! Once seen never forgotten! Push aside the curtain and walk in!"

Again the voice sounded close beside them. Jane put out her hand. To her surprise she found that what had seemed a plain and starless patch of sky was really a thick dark curtain. She pressed against it and felt it yield; she gathered up a fold of it and, pulling Michael after her, pushed the curtain aside.

A bright flare of light dazzled them for a moment. When they could see again they found themselves standing at the edge of a ring of shining sand. The great blue curtain enfolded the ring on all sides and was drawn up to a point above as though it were a tent.

"Now then! Do you know you were almost too late? Got your tickets?"

They turned. Beside them, his bright feet gleaming in the sand, stood a strange and gigantic figure. He looked like a hunter, for a starry leopard-skin was slung across his shoulders, and from his belt, decorated with three large stars, hung down a shining sword.

"Tickets, please!" he held out his hand.

"I'm afraid we haven't got any. You see, we didn't know—" began Jane.

"Dear, dear, how careless! Can't let you in without a ticket, you know. But what's that in your hand?"

Jane held out the golden spark.

"Well, if that isn't a ticket, I'd like to know what is!" He pressed the spark between his three large stars. "Another shiner for Orion's belt!" he remarked pleasantly.

"Is that who you are?" said Jane, staring at him.

"Of course — didn't you know? But — excuse me, I must attend to the door. Move along, please!"

The children, feeling rather shy, moved on hand in hand. Tier on tier of seats rose up at one side of them and at the other a golden cord separated them from the ring. And the ring itself was crowded with the strangest collection of animals, all shining bright as gold. A Horse with great gold Wings pranced by on glittering hooves. A golden Fish threshed up the dust of the ring with its fin. Three Little Kids were rushing wildly about on two legs instead of four. And it seemed to Jane and Michael, as they looked closer, that all these animals were made of stars. The wings of the Horse were of stars, not feathers, the Three Kids had stars on their noses and tails, and the Fish was covered with shining starry scales.

"Good-evening!" it remarked, bowing politely to Jane as it threshed by. "Fine night for the performance!"

But before Jane could reply it had hurried past.

"How very strange!" said she. "I've never seen animals like this before!"

"Why should it be strange?" said a voice behind them.

Two children, both boys and a little older than Jane, stood there smiling. They were dressed in shining tunics and their peaked caps had each a star for a pompon.

"I beg your pardon," said Jane, politely. "But, you see, we're used to — er — fur and feathers and these animals seem to be made of stars."

"But of course they are!" said the first boy, opening his eyes very wide. "What else could they be made of? They're the Constellations!"

"But even the sawdust is gold—" began Michael.

The second boy laughed. "Star-dust, you mean! Haven't you been to a Circus before?"

"Not this kind."

"All circuses are alike," said the first boy. "Our animals are brighter, that's all."

"But who are you?" demanded Michael.

"The Twins. He's Pollux and I'm Castor. We're always together."

"Like the Siamese Twins?"

"Yes. But more so. The Siamese Twins are only joined in body but we have a single heart and a single mind between us. We can think each other's thoughts and dream each other's dreams. But we mustn't stay here talking. We've got to get ready — see you later!" And the Twins ran off and disappeared through a curtained exit.

"Hullo!" said a gloomy voice from inside the ring. "I suppose you don't happen to have a currant bun in your pocket?"

A Dragon with two large finny tails lumbered towards them, breathing steam from its nostrils.

"I'm sorry, we haven't," said Jane.

"Nor a biscuit or two?" said the Dragon eagerly.

They shook their heads.

"I thought not," said the Dragon, dropping a golden tear. "It's always the way on Circus nights. I don't get fed till after the performance. On ordinary occasions I have a beautiful maiden for supper—"

Jane drew back quickly, pulling Michael with her.

"Oh, don't be alarmed!" the Dragon went on, reassuringly. "You'd be much too small. Besides, you're human and therefore tasteless. They keep me hungry," he explained, "so that I shall do my tricks better. But after the show—" A greedy light came into his eyes and he shuffled away, lolling out his tongue and saying "Yum-yum" in a soft, greedy, hissing voice.

"I'm glad we're only human," said Jane, turning to Michael. "It would be dreadful to be eaten by a Dragon!"

But Michael had hurried on ahead and was talking eagerly to the Three Little Kids.

"How does it go?" he was asking, as Jane caught up with him.

And the Eldest Kid, which apparently had offered to recite, cleared its throat, and began—

"Horn and toe,

I wonder, Mary Poppins," said Mrs. Banks, hurrying into the Nursery one morning, "if you will have time to do some shopping for me?"

And she gave Mary Poppins a sweet, nervous smile as though she were uncertain what the answer would be.

Mary Poppins turned from the fire where she was airing Annabel's clothes.

"I might," she remarked, not very encouragingly.

"Oh, I see—" said Mrs. Banks, and she looked more nervous than ever.

"Or again — I might not," continued Mary Poppins, busily shaking out a woollen jacket and hanging it over the fire-guard.

"Well — in case you did have time, here is the List and here is a Pound Note. And if there is any change left over you may spend it!"

Mrs. Banks put the money on the chest of drawers.

Mary Poppins said nothing. She just sniffed.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Banks, suddenly remembering something. "And the Twins must walk to-day, Mary Poppins. Robertson Ay sat down on the perambulator this morning. He mistook it for an arm-chair. So it will have to be mended. Can you manage without it — and carry Annabel?"

Mary Poppins opened her mouth and closed it again with a snap.

"I," she remarked tartly, "can manage anything — and more, if I choose."

"I–I know!" said Mrs. Banks, edging towards the door. "You are a Treasure — a perfect Treasure — an absolutely wonderful and altogether suitable Treas—" Her voice died away as she hurried down the stairs.

"And yet — and yet — I sometimes wish she wasn't!" Mrs. Banks remarked to her great-grandmother's portrait as she dusted the Drawing-room. "She makes me feel small and silly, as though I were a little girl again. And I'm not!" Mrs. Banks tossed her head and flicked a speck of dust from the spotted cow on the mantel-piece. "I'm a very important person and the Mother of five children. She forgets that!" And she went on with her work thinking out all the things she would like to say to Mary Poppins but knowing all the time that she would never dare.

Mary Poppins put the list and the Pound Note into her bag and in no time she had pinned on her hat and was hurrying out of the house with Annabel in her arms and Jane and Michael, each holding the hand of a Twin, following as quickly as they could.

"Best foot forward, please!" she remarked, turning sternly upon them.

They quickened their pace, dragging the poor Twins with a shuffling sound along the pavement. They forgot that John's arm and Barbara's were being pulled nearly out of their sockets. Their only thought was to keep up with Mary Poppins and see what she did with the change from the Pound Note.

"Two packets of candles, four pounds of rice, three of brown sugar and six of castor; two tins of tomato soup and a hearth-brush, a pair of housemaid's gloves, half-a-stick of sealing-wax, one bag of flour, one fire-lighter, two boxes of matches, two cauliflowers and a bundle of rhubarb!"

Mary Poppins, hurrying into the first shop beyond the Park, read out the list.

The Grocer, who was fat and bald and rather short of breath, took down the order as quickly as he could.

"One bag of housemaid's gloves—" he wrote, nervously licking the wrong end of his blunt little pencil.

"Flour, I said!" Mary Poppins reminded him tartly.

The Grocer blushed as red as a mulberry.

"Oh, I'm sorry. No offense meant, I'm sure. Lovely day, isn't it? Yes. My mistake. One bag of house — er — flour."

He hurriedly scribbled it down and added—

"Two boxes of hearth-brushes—"

"Matches!" snapped Mary Poppins.

The Grocer's hands trembled on his pad.

"Oh, of course. It must be the pencil — it seems to write all the wrong things. I must get a new one. Matches, of course! And then you said—?" He looked up nervously and then down again at his little stub of pencil.

Mary Poppins, unfolded the list, read it out again in an angry, impatient voice.

"Sorry," said the Grocer, as she came to the end. "But rhubarb's off. Would damsons do?"

"Certainly not. A packet of tapioca."

"Oh, no, Mary Poppins — not Tapioca. We had that last week," Michael reminded her.

She glanced at him and then at the Grocer, and by the look in her eye they both knew that there was no hope. Tapioca it would be. The Grocer, blushing redder than ever, went away to get it.

"There won't be any change left if she goes on like this," said Jane, watching the pile of groceries being heaped upon the counter.

"She might have enough left over for a bag of acid-drops — but that's all," Michael said mournfully, as Mary Poppins took the Pound Note out of her bag.

"Thank you," she said, as the Grocer handed her the change.

"Thank you!" he remarked politely, leaning his arms on the counter. He smiled at her in a manner that was meant to be pleasant and continued, "Keeps nice and fine, doesn't it?" He spoke proudly as though he, himself, had complete charge of the weather and had made it fine for her on purpose.

"We want rain!" said Mary Poppins, snapping her mouth and her hand-bag at the same time.

"That's right," said the Grocer hurriedly, trying not to offend her. "Rain's always pleasant."

"Never!" retorted Mary Poppins, tossing Annabel into a more comfortable position on her arm.

The Grocer's face fell. Nothing he said was right.

"I hope," he remarked, opening the door courteously for Mary Poppins, "that we shall be favoured with your further custom, Madam."

"Good-day!" Mary Poppins swept out.

The Grocer sighed.

"Here," he said, scrabbling hurriedly in a box near the door. "Take these. I meant no harm, truly I didn't. I only wanted to oblige."

Jane and Michael held out their hands. The Grocer slipped three chocolate drops into Michael's and two into Jane's.

"One for each of you, one for the two little ones and one for—" he nodded towards Mary Poppins' retreating figure—"her!"

They thanked the Grocer and hurried after Mary Poppins, munching their chocolate drops.

"What's that you're eating?" she demanded, looking at the dark rim round Michael's mouth.

"Chocolates. The Grocer gave us one each. And one for you." He held out the last drop. It was very sticky.

"Like his impudence!" said Mary Poppins, but she took the chocolate drop and ate it in two bites as though she thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Is there much change left?" enquired Michael anxiously.

"That's as may be."

She swept into the Chemist's and came out with a cake of soap, a mustard plaster and a tube of toothpaste.

Jane and Michael, waiting with the Twins at the door, sighed heavily.

The Pound Note, they knew, was disappearing fast.

"She'll hardly have enough left over for a stamp and, even if she has, that won't be very interesting," said Jane.

"Now to Mr. Tip's!" snapped Mary Poppins, swinging the Chemist's packages and her bag from one hand and holding Annabel tightly with the other.

"But what can we buy there?" said Michael in despair. For there was not much jingle in Mary Poppins' purse.

"Coal — two tons and a half," she said, hurrying ahead.

"How much is coal?"

"Two pounds a ton."

"But — Mary Poppins! We can't buy that!" Michael stared at her, appalled.

"It will go on the bill."

This was such a relief to Jane and Michael that they bounded beside her, dragging John and Barbara behind them at a trot.

"Well, is that all?" Michael asked, when Mr. Tip and his coals had been left safely behind.

"Cake shop!" said Mary Poppins, examining her list and darting in at a dark door. Through the window they could see her pointing to a pile of macaroons. The assistant handed her a large bag.

"She's bought a dozen at least," said Jane sadly. Usually the sight of anybody buying a macaroon filled them with delight, but to-day they wished and wished that there wasn't a macaroon in the world.

"Now where?" demanded Michael, hopping from one leg to the other in his anxiety to know if there was any of the Pound Note left. He felt sure there couldn't be and yet — he hoped.

"Home," said Mary Poppins.

Their faces fell. There was no change, after all, not even a penny or Mary Poppins would surely have spent it. But Mary Poppins, as she dumped the bag of macaroons up on Annabel's chest and strode ahead, had such a look on her face that they did not dare to make any remark. They only knew that, for once, she had disappointed them and they felt they could not forgive her.

"But — this isn't the way home," complained Michael, dragging his feet so that his toes scraped along the pavement.

"Isn't the Park on the way home, I'd like to know?" she demanded, turning fiercely upon him.

"Yes — but—"

"There are more ways than one of going through a Park," she remarked and led them round to a side of it they had never seen before.

The sun shone warmly down. The tall trees bowed over the railings and rustled their leaves. Up in the branches two sparrows were fighting over a piece of straw. A squirrel hopped along the stone balustrade and sat up on his hindquarters, asking for nuts.

But to-day these things did not matter. Jane and Michael were not interested. All they could think of was the fact that Mary Poppins had spent the whole Pound Note on unimportant things and had kept nothing over.

Tired and disappointed, they trailed after her towards the Gates.

Over the entrance, a new one they had never seen before, spread a tall stone arch, splendidly carved with a Lion and a Unicorn. And beneath the arch sat an old, old woman, her face as grey as the stone itself and as withered and wrinkled as a walnut. On her little old knees she held a tray piled up with what looked like small coloured strips of rubber and above her head, tied firmly to the Park railings, a cluster of bright balloons bobbed and bounced and bounded.

"Balloons! Balloons!" shouted Jane. And, loosening her hand from John's sticky fingers, she ran towards the old woman. Michael bounded after her, leaving Barbara alone and lost in the middle of the pavement.

"Well, my deary-ducks!" said the Balloon Woman in an old cracked voice. "Which will you have? Take your choice! And take your time!" She leant forward and shook her tray in front of them.

"We only came to look," Jane explained. "We've got no money."

"Tch, tch, tch! What's the good of looking at a balloon? You've got to feel a balloon, you've got to hold a balloon, you've got to know a balloon! Coming to look! What good will that do you?"

The old woman's voice crackled like a little flame. She rocked herself on her stool.

Jane and Michael stared at her helplessly. They knew she was speaking the truth. But what could they do?

"When I was a girl," the old woman went on, "people really understood balloons. They didn't just come and look! They took — yes, they took! There wasn't a child that went through these gates without one. They wouldn't have insulted the Balloon Woman in those days by just looking and passing by!"

She bent her head back and gazed up at the bouncing balloons above her.

"Ah, my loves and doves!" she cried. "They don't understand you any more — nobody but the old woman understands. You're old-fashioned now. Nobody wants you!"

"We do want one," said Michael stoutly. "But we haven't any money. She spent the whole Pound Note on—"

"And who is 'she'?" enquired a voice close behind him.

He turned and his face went pink.

"I meant — er — that you — er—" he began nervously.

"Speak politely of your betters!" remarked Mary Poppins and, stretching her arm over his shoulder, she put half-a-crown on the Balloon Woman's tray.

Michael stared at it, shining there among the limp un-blown balloons.

"Then there was some change over!" said Jane, wishing she had not thought so crossly of Mary Poppins.

The Balloon Woman her old eyes sparkling, picked up the coin, and gazed at it for a long moment.

"Shiny, shiny, King-and-Crown!" she cried. "I haven't seen one of these since I was a girl." She cocked her head at Mary Poppins. "Do you want a balloon, my lass?"

"If you please!" said Mary Poppins with haughty politeness.

"How many, my deary-duck, how many?"

"Four!"

Jane and Michael, almost jumping out of their skins, turned and flung their arms round her.

"Oh, Mary Poppins, do you mean it? One each? Really-really?"

"I hope I always say what I mean," she said primly, looking very conceited.

They sprang towards the tray and began to turn over the coloured balloon-cases.

The Balloon Woman slipped the silver coin into a pocket in her skirt. "There, my shiny!" she said, giving the pocket a loving pat. Then, with excited trembling hands, she helped the children turn over the cases.

"Go carefully, my deary-ducks!" she warned them. "Remember, there's balloons and balloons, and one for everybody! Take your choice and take your time. There's many a child got the wrong balloon and his life was never the same after."

"I'll have this one!" said Michael, choosing a yellow one with red markings.

"Well, let me blow it up and you can see if it's the right one!" said the Balloon Woman.

She took it from him and with one gigantic puff blew it up. Zip! There it was! You would hardly think such a tiny person could have so much breath in her body. The yellow balloon, neatly marked with red, bobbed at the end of its string.

"But, I say!" said Michael staring. "It's got my name on it!"

And, sure enough, the red markings on the balloon were letters spelling out the two words—"MICHAEL BANKS."

"Aha!" cackled the Balloon Woman. "What did I tell you? You took your time and the choice was right!"

"See if mine is!" said Jane, handing the Balloon Woman a limp blue balloon.

She puffed and blew it up and there appeared across the fat blue globe the words "JANE CAROLINE BANKS" in large white letters.

"Is that your name, my deary-duck?" said the Balloon Woman.

Jane nodded.

The Balloon Woman laughed to herself, a thin, old cackling laugh, as Jane took the balloon from her and bounced it on the air.

"Me! Me!" cried John and Barbara, plunging fat hands among the balloon-cases. John drew out a pink one and, as she blew it up, the Balloon Woman smiled. There, round the balloon, the words could clearly be seen. "JOHN AND BARBARA BANKS-ONE BETWEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE TWINS."

"But," said Jane, "I don't understand. How did you know? You never saw us before."

"Ah, my deary-duck, didn't I tell you there were balloons and balloons and that these were extra-special?"

"But did you put the names on them?" said Michael.

"I?" the old woman chuckled. "Nary I!"

"Then who did?"

"Ask me another, my deary-duck! All I know is that the names are there! And there's a balloon for everybody in the world if only they choose properly."

"One for Mary Poppins, too?"

The Balloon Woman cocked her head and looked at Mary Poppins with a curious smile.

"Let her try!" She rocked herself on her little stool. "Take your choice and take your time! Choose and see!"

Mary Poppins sniffed importantly. Her hand hovered for a moment over the empty balloons and then pounced on a red one. She held it out at arm's length and, to their astonishment, the children saw it slowly filling with air of it's own accord. Larger and larger it grew till it became the size of Michael's. But still it swelled until it was three times as large as any other balloon. And across it appeared in letters of gold the two words "MARY POPPINS."

The red balloon bounced through the air and the old woman tied a string to it and with a little cackling laugh, handed it back to Mary Poppins.

Up into the dancing air danced the four balloons. They tugged at their strings as though they wanted to be free of their moorings. The wind caught them and flung them backwards and forwards, to the North, to the South, to the East, to the West.

"Balloons and balloons, my deary-ducks! One for everybody if only they knew it!" cried the Balloon Woman, happily.

At that moment an elderly gentleman in a top hat, turning in at the Park Gates, looked across and saw the balloons. The children saw him give a little start. Then he hurried up to the Balloon Woman.

"How much?" he said, jingling his money in his pocket.

"Sevenpence halfpenny. Take your choice and take your time!"

He took a brown one and the Balloon Woman blew it up. The words "The Honourable WILLIAM WETHERILL WILKINS" appeared on it in green letters.

"Good Gracious!" said the elderly gentleman. "Good gracious, that's my name!"

"You choose well, my deary-duck. Balloons and balloons!" said the old woman.

The elderly gentleman stared at his balloon as it tugged at it's string.

"Extraordinary!" he said, and blew his nose with a trumpeting sound. "Forty years ago, when I was a boy, I tried to buy a balloon here. But they wouldn't let me. Said they couldn't afford it. Forty years— and it's been waiting for me all this time. Most extraordinary!"

And he hurried away, bumping into the arch because his eyes were fixed on the balloon. The children saw him giving little excited leaps in the air as he went.

"Look at him!" cried Michael as the Elderly Gentleman bobbed higher and higher. But at that moment his own balloon began pulling at the string and he felt himself lifted off his feet.

"Hello, hello! How funny! Mine's doing it, too!"

"Balloons and balloons, my deary-duck!" said the Balloon Woman and broke into her cackling laugh, as the Twins, both holding their balloon by its single string, bounced off the ground.

"I'm going, I'm going!" shrieked Jane as she, too, was borne upwards.

"Home, please!" said Mary Poppins.

Immediately, the red balloon soared up, dragging Mary Poppins after it. Up and down she bounced, with Annabel and the parcels in her arms. Through the Gates and above the path the red balloon bore Mary Poppins, her hat very straight, her hair very tidy and her feet as trimly walking the air as they usually walked the earth. Jane and Michael and the Twins, tugged jerkily up and down by their balloons, followed her.

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Jane as she was whirled past the branch of an elm tree, "What a delicious feeling!"

"I feel as if I were made of air!" said Michael, knocking into a Park seat and bouncing off it again. "What a lovely way to go home!"

"O-o-h! E-e-eh!" squeaked the Twins, tossing and bobbing together.

"Best foot forward, please, and don't dawdle!" said Mary Poppins, looking fiercely over her shoulder, for all the world as if they were walking sedately on the ground instead of being tugged through the air.

Past the Park Keeper's house they went and down the Lime Walk. The Elderly Gentleman was there bouncing along ahead of them.

Michael turned for a moment and looked behind him.

"Look, Jane, look! Everybody's got one!"

She turned. In the distance a group of people, all carrying balloons, were being jerked up and down in the air.

"The Ice Cream Man has bought one!" she cried, staring and just missing a statue.

"Yes, and the Sweep! And there — do you see? — is Miss Lark!"

Across the lawn a familiar figure came bouncing, hatted and gloved, and holding a balloon bearing the name "LUCINDA EMILY LARK." She bobbed across the Elm Walk, looking very pleased and dignified, and disappeared round the edge of a fountain.

By this time the Park was filling with people and every one of them had a balloon with a name on it and every one was bouncing in the air.

"Heave ho, there! Room for the Admiral! Where's my port? Heave ho!" shouted a huge, nautical voice as Admiral and Mrs. Boom went rolling through the air. They held the string of a large white balloon with their names on it in blue letters.

"Masts and mizzens! Cockles and shrimps! Haul away, my hearties!" roared Admiral Boom, carefully avoiding a large oak tree.

The crowd of balloons and people grew thicker. There was hardly a patch of air in the Park that was not rainbowy with balloons. Jane and Michael could see Mary Poppins threading her way primly among them and they, too, hurried through the throng, with John and Barbara bobbing at their heels.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! My balloon won't bounce me. I must have chosen the wrong one!" said a voice at Jane's elbow.

An old-fashioned lady with a quill in her hat and a feather boa round her neck was standing on the path just below Jane. At her feet lay a purple balloon across which was written in letters of gold, "THE PRIME MINISTER."

"What shall I do?" she cried. "The old woman at the Gates said 'Take your choice and take your time, my deary-duck!' And I did. But I've got the wrong one. I'm not the Prime Minister!"

"Excuse me, but I am!" said a voice at her side, as a tall man, very elegantly dressed and carrying a rolled umbrella, stepped up to her.

The lady turned. "Oh, then this is your balloon! Let me see if you've got mine!"

The Prime Minister, whose balloon was not bouncing him at all, showed it to her. Its name was "LADY MURIEL BRIGHTON-JONES."

"Yes, you have! We've got mixed!" she cried, and handing the Prime Minister his balloon, she seized her own. Presently they were off the ground and flying among the trees, talking as they went.

"Are you married?" Jane and Michael heard Lady Muriel ask.

And the Prime Minister answered, "No. I can't find the right sort of middle-aged lady — not too young and not too old and rather jolly because I'm so serious myself."

"Would I do?" said Lady Muriel Brighton-Jones. "I enjoy myself quite a lot."

"Yes, I think you'd do very nicely," said the Prime Minister and, hand in hand, they joined the tossing throng.

By this time the Park was really rather crowded. Jane and Michael, bobbing across the lawns after Mary Poppins, constantly bumped into other bouncing figures who had bought balloons from the Balloon Woman. A tall man, wearing a long moustache, a blue suit, and a helmet, was being tugged through the air by a balloon marked "POLICE INSPECTOR"; and another, bearing the words "LORD MAYOR," dragged along a round, fat person in a three-cornered hat, a red overall and a large brass necklace.

"Move on, please! Don't crowd the Park. Observe the Regulations! All litter to be Deposited in the Rubbish Baskets!"

The Park Keeper, roaring and ranting, and holding a small cherry-coloured balloon marked "F. SMITH," threaded his way through the crowd. With a wave of his hand he moved on two dogs — a bulldog with the word "CU" written on his balloon and a fox-terrier whose name appeared to be "ALBERTINE."

"Leave my dogs alone! Or I shall take your number and report you!" cried a lady whose balloon said she was "THE DUCHESS OF MAYFIELD."

But the Park Keeper took no notice and went bobbing by, crying "All Dogs on a Lead! Don't crowd the Park! No Smoking! Observe the Regulations!" till his voice was hoarse.

"Where's Mary Poppins?" said Michael, whisking up to Jane.

"There! Just ahead of us!" she replied and pointed to the prim, tidy figure that bounced at the end of the largest balloon in the Park. They followed it homewards.

"Balloons and Balloons, my deary-ducks!" cried a cackling voice behind them.

And, turning, they saw the Balloon Woman. Her tray was empty and there was not a balloon anywhere near her, but in spite of that she was flying through the air as though a hundred invisible balloons were drawing her onwards.

"Every one sold!" she screamed as she sped by. "There's a balloon for every one if only they knew it. They took their choice and they took their time! And I've sold the lot! Balloons and Balloons."

Her pockets jingled richly as she flew by, and standing still in the air, Jane and Michael watched the small, withered figure shooting past the bobbing balloons, past the Prime Minister and the Lord Mayor, past Mary Poppins and Annabel, until the tiny shape grew tinier still and the Balloon Woman disappeared into the distance.

"Balloons and Balloons, my deary-ducks!" The faint echo came drifting back to them.

"Step along, please!" said Mary Poppins. They

By this time the Park was really rather crowded

flocked round her, all four of them. Annabel, rocked by the movement of Mary Poppins' balloon, nestled closer to her and went to sleep.

The gate of Number Seventeen stood open, the front door was ajar. Mary Poppins, leaping neatly and bouncing primly, passed through and up the stairs. The children followed, jumping and bobbing. And when they reached the nursery door, their four pairs of feet clattered noisily to the ground. Mary Poppins floated down and landed without a sound.

"Oh, what a lovely afternoon!" said Jane, rushing to fling her arms round Mary Poppins.

"Well, that's more than you are, at this moment. Brush your hair, please. I don't care for scarecrows," Mary Poppins said tartly.

"I feel like a balloon myself," said Michael joyfully, "All airy-fairy-free!"

"I'd be sorry for the fairy that looked like you!" said Mary Poppins. "Go and wash your hands. You're no better than a sweep!"

When they came back, clean and tidy, the four balloons were resting against the ceiling, their strings firmly moored behind the picture over the mantel-piece.

Michael gazed up at them — his own yellow one, Jane's blue, the Twins' pink and Mary Poppins' red. They were very still. No breath of wind moved them. Light and bright, steady and still, they leaned against the ceiling.

"I wonder!" said Michael softly, half to himself.

"You wonder what?" said Mary Poppins, sorting out her parcels.

"I wonder if it would all have happened if you hadn't been with us."

Mary Poppins sniffed.

"I shouldn't wonder if you didn't wonder much too much!" she replied.

And with that Michael had to be content.

I don't believe it will ever stop — ever!"

Jane put down her copy of Robinson Crusoe and gazed gloomily out of the window.

The snow fell steadily, drifting down in large soft flakes, covering the Park and the pavements and the houses in Cherry Tree Lane with its thick white mantle. It had not stopped snowing for a week and in all that time the children had not once been able to go out.

"I don't mind — not very much," said Michael from the floor where he was busy arranging the animals of his Noah's Ark. "We can be Esquimos and eat whales."

"Silly — how could we get whales when it's too snowy even to go and buy cough drops!"

"They might come here. Whales do, sometimes," he retorted.

"How do you know?"

"Well, I don't know, exactly. But they might. Jane, where's the second giraffe? Oh, here he is — under the tiger!"

He put the two giraffes into the Ark together.

"The Animals went in Two-by-Two,

It had been a quiet morning.

More than one person, passing along Cherry Tree Lane, had looked over the fence of Number Seventeen and said—"How very extraordinary! Not a sound!"

Even the house, which usually took no notice of anything, began to feel alarmed.

"Dear me! Dear me!" it said to itself, listening to the silence. "I hope nothing's wrong!"

Downstairs in the Kitchen, Mrs. Brill, with her spectacles on the tip of her nose, was nodding over the newspaper.

On the first-floor landing, Mrs. Banks and Ellen were tidying the Linen-cupboard and counting the sheets.

Upstairs in the Nursery Mary Poppins was quietly clearing away the luncheon things.

"I feel very good and sweet to-day," Jane was saying drowsily, as she lay stretched on the floor in a patch of sunlight.

"That must be a change!" remarked Mary Poppins with a sniff.

Michael took the last chocolate out of the box Aunt Flossie had given him for his sixth birthday last week.

Should he offer it to Jane? He wondered. Or to the Twins? Or Mary Poppins?

No. After all, it had been his birthday.

"Last, lucky last!" he said quickly and popped it into his own mouth. "And I wish there were more!" he added regretfully, gazing into the empty box.

"All good things come to an end, sometime," said Mary Poppins primly.

He cocked his head on one side and looked up at her.

"You don't!" he said daringly. "And you're a good thing."

The beginnings of a satisfied smile glimmered at the corners of her mouth but it disappeared as quickly as it had come.

"That's as may be," she retorted. "Nothing lasts for ever."

Jane looked round, startled.

If nothing lasted for ever it meant that Mary Poppins— "Nothing?" she said uneasily.

"Nothing at all," snapped Mary Poppins.

And as if she had guessed what was in Jane's mind she went to the mantel-piece and took down her large Thermometer. Then she pulled her carpet-bag from under the camp-bed and popped the Thermometer into it.

Jane sat up quickly.

"Mary Poppins, why are you doing that?"

Mary Poppins gave her a curious look.

"Because," she said priggishly. "I was always taught to be tidy." And she pushed the carpet-bag under the bed again.

Jane sighed. Her heart felt tight and heavy in her chest.

"I feel rather sad and anxious," she whispered to Michael.

"I expect you had too much steam pudding!" he retorted.

"No, it's not that kind of a feeling—" she began, and broke off suddenly for a knock had sounded at the door.

Tap! Tap!

"Come in!" called Mary Poppins.

Robertson Ay stood there yawning.

"Do you know what?" he said sleepily.

"No, what?"

"There's a Merry-go-round in the Park!"

"That's no news to me!" snapped Mary Poppins.

"A Fair?" cried Michael excitedly. "With swinging-boats and a Hoop-la?"

"No," said Robertson Ay, solemnly shaking his head. "A Merry-go-round, all by itself. Came last night. Thought you would like to know."

He shuffled languidly to the door and closed it after him.

Jane sprang up, her anxiety forgotten.

"Oh, Mary Poppins, may we go?"

"Say Yes, Mary Poppins, say Yes!" cried Michael dancing round her.

She turned, balancing a tray of plates and cups on her arm.

"I am going," she remarked, calmly. "Because I have the fare. I don't know about you."

"There's sixpence in my money-box!" said Jane eagerly.

"Oh, Jane, lend me twopence!" pleaded Michael. He had spent all his money the day before on a stick of Liquorice.

They gazed anxiously at Mary Poppins, waiting for her to make up her mind.

"No borrowing or lending in this Nursery, please," she said tartly. "I will pay for one ride each. And one is all you will have." She swept from the room carrying the tray.

They stared at each other.

"What can be the matter?" said Michael. It was now his turn to be anxious. "She's never paid for anything before!"

"Aren't you well, Mary Poppins?" he asked uneasily, as she came hurrying back.

"Never better in my life!" she replied, tossing her head. "And I'll thank you, if you please, not to stand there, peeking and prying at me as if I were a Waxwork! Go and get ready!"

Her look was so stern, and her eyes so fiercely blue, and she spoke so like her usual self that their anxiety vanished away and they ran, shouting, to get their hats.

Presently the quietness of the house was broken by the noise of slamming doors, screaming voices and stamping feet.

"Dear me! Dear me! What a relief! I was getting quite anxious!" said the house to itself, listening to Jane and Michael and the Twins plunging and tumbling downstairs.

Mary Poppins paused for a moment to glance at her reflection in the hall mirror.

"Oh, do come on, Mary Poppins! You look all right," said Michael impatiently.

She wheeled about. Her expression was angry, outraged and astonished all at once.

All right, indeed! That was hardly the word. All right, in her blue jacket with the silver buttons! All right with her gold locket round her neck! All right with the parrot-headed umbrella under her arm!

Mary Poppins sniffed.

"That will be enough from you — and more!" she said shortly. Though what she meant was that it wasn't nearly sufficient.

But Michael was too excited to care.

"Come on, Jane!" he cried, dancing wildly. "I simply can't wait! Come on!"

They ran on ahead while Mary Poppins strapped the Twins into the perambulator. And presently the garden gate clicked behind them and they were on the way to the Merry-go-round.

Faint sounds of music came floating across from the Park, humming and drumming like a humming-top.

"Good-afternoon! And how are we to-day?" Miss Lark's high voice greeted them as she hurried down the Lane with her dogs.

But before they had time to reply she went on, "Off to the Merry-go-round, I suppose! Andrew and Willoughby and I have just been. A very superior Entertainment. So nice and clean. And such a polite Attendant!" She fluttered past with the two dogs prancing beside her. "Good-bye! Good-bye!" she called back over her shoulder as she disappeared round the corner.

"All hands to the pump! Heave ho, my hearties!"

A well-known voice came roaring from the direction of the Park. And through the gates came Admiral Boom, looking very red in the face and dancing a Sailor's Hornpipe.

"Yo, ho, ho! And a bottle of Rum! The Admiral's been on the Merry-go-round. Bail her out! Cockles and Shrimps! It's as good as a long sea-voyage!" he roared, as he greeted the children.

"We're going, too!" said Michael excitedly.

"What? You're going?" The Admiral seemed quite astonished.

"Yes, of course!" said Jane.

"But — not all the way, surely?" The Admiral looked curiously at Mary Poppins.

"They're having one ride each, Sir!" she explained primly.

"Ah, well! Farewell!" he said in a voice that for him was almost gentle.

Then to the children's astonishment, he drew himself up, put his hand to his forehead, and smartly saluted Mary Poppins.

"Ur-rrrrrrumph!" he trumpeted into his handkerchief. "Hoist your sail! And up with your Anchor! And away, Love, away!"

And he waved his hand and went off rolling from side to side of the pavement and singing,

"Every nice Girl loves a Sailor!"

in a loud, rumbling voice.

"Why did he say Farewell and call you Love?" said Michael, staring after the Admiral as he walked on beside Mary Poppins.

"Because he thinks I'm a Thoroughly Respectable Person!" she snapped. But there was a soft dreamy look in her eyes.

Again Jane felt the strange sad feeling and her heart tightened inside her.

"What can be going to happen?" she asked herself anxiously. She put her hand on Mary Poppins' hand as it lay on the handle of the perambulator. It felt warm and safe and comforting.

"How silly I am!" she said softly. "There can't be anything wrong!"

And she hurried beside the perambulator as it trundled towards the Park.

"Just a moment! Just a moment!" A panting voice sounded behind them.

"Why," said Michael, turning. "It's Miss Tartlet!"

"Indeed, it is not," said Miss Tartlet breathlessly. "It's Mrs. Turvy!"

She turned, blushing to Mr. Turvy. He stood beside her smiling a little sheepishly.

"Is this one of your Second Mondays?" Jane enquired. He was right-side up, so she did not think it could be.

"Oh, no! Thank goodness, no!" he said hastily. "We — er — were just coming to say — oh, Good-Afternoon, Mary!"

"Well, Cousin Arthur?" They all shook hands.

"I wondered if you were going on the Merry-go-round?" he enquired.

"Yes I am. We all are!"

"All!" Mr. Turvy's eye-brows shot up to the top of his head. He seemed very surprised.

"They're going for one ride each!" said Mary Poppins, nodding at the children. "Sit still, please!" she snapped at the Twins, who had bobbed up excitedly. "You're not Performing Mice!"

"Oh, I see. And then — they're getting off? Well — Good-bye, Mary, and Bon Voyage!" Mr. Turvy raised his hat high above his head, very ceremoniously.

"Good-bye — and thank you for coming!" said Mary Poppins, bowing graciously to Mr. and Mrs. Turvy.

"What does Bon Voyage mean?" said Michael, looking over his shoulder at their retreating figures — Mrs. Turvy very fat and curly, Mr. Turvy very straight and thin.

"Good journey! Which is something you won't have unless you walk up!" snapped Mary Poppins. He hurried after her.

The music was louder now, beating and drumming on the air, drawing them all towards it.

Mary Poppins, almost running, turned the perambulator in at the Park Gates. But there a row of pavement pictures caught her eye and she pulled up suddenly.

"What is she stopping for now?" said Michael in an angry whisper to Jane. "We'll never get there at this rate!"

The Pavement Artist had just completed a set of fruit in coloured chalks — an Apple, a Pear, a Plum, and a Banana. Underneath them he was busy chalking the words—

TAKE ONE

"Ahem!" said Mary Poppins, with a lady-like cough.

The Pavement Artist leapt to his feet, and Jane and Michael saw that it was Mary Poppins' great friend, the Match Man.

"Mary! At last! I've been waiting all day!"

The Match Man seized her by both hands and gazed admiringly into her eyes.

Mary Poppins looked very shy and rather pleased.

"Well, Bert, we're off to the Merry-go-round," she said, blushing.

He nodded. "I thought you would be. They going with you?" he added, jerking his thumb at the children.

Mary Poppins shook her head mysteriously.

"Just for a ride," she said quickly.

"Oh—" He pursed up his mouth. "I see."

Michael stared. What else could they do on a Merry-go-round except go for a ride? He wondered.

"A nice set of pictures you've got!" Mary Poppins was saying admiringly, gazing down at the fruit.

"Help yourself!" said the Match Man airily.

And with that Mary Poppins, before their astonished eyes, bent down and picked the painted Plum from the pavement and took a bite out of it.

"Won't you take one?" said the Match Man, turning to Jane.

She stared at him. "But can I?" It seemed so impossible.

"Try!"

She bent towards the Apple and it leapt into her hand. She bit into the red side. It tasted very sweet.

"But how do you do it?" said Michael, staring.

"I don't," said the Match Man. "It's Her!" He nodded at Mary Poppins as she stood primly beside the perambulator. "It only happens when She's around, I assure you!"

Then he bent down and picked the pear clean out of the pavement and offered it to Michael.

"But what about you?" said Michael, for though he wanted the Pear, he also wanted to be polite.

"That's all right!" said the Match Man. "I can always paint more!" And with that he plucked the Banana, peeled it, and gave half each to the Twins.

A clear sweet strain of music came floating urgently to their ears.

"Now, Bert, we must really be going!" said Mary Poppins hurriedly, as she neatly hid her Plum-stone between two Park railings.

"Must you, Mary?" said the Match Man, very sadly. "Well, Good-bye, my Dear! And Good Luck!"

"But you'll see him again, won't you?" said Michael, as he followed Mary Poppins through the Gates.

"Maybe and maybe not!" she said shortly. "And it's no affair of yours!"

Jane turned and looked back. The Match Man was standing by his box of chalks, gazing with all his eyes after Mary Poppins.

"This is a curious day!" she said, frowning.

Mary Poppins glared at her.

"What's wrong with it, pray?"

"Well — everyone's saying Good-bye, and looking at you so strangely."

"Speech costs nothing!" snapped Mary Poppins. "And a Cat can look at a King, I suppose?"

Jane was silent. She knew it was no good saying anything to Mary Poppins because Mary Poppins never explained.

She sighed. And because she was not quite sure why she sighed, she began to run, streaking past Michael and Mary Poppins and the perambulator towards the thundering music.

"Wait for me! Wait for me!" screamed Michael, dashing after her. And behind him came the rumbling trundle of the perambulator as Mary Poppins hurried after them both.

There stood the Merry-go-round on a clear patch of lawn between the lime trees. It was a new one, very bright and shiny, with prancing horses going up and down on their brass poles. A striped flag fluttered from the top, and everywhere it was gorgeously decorated with golden scrolls and silver leaves and coloured birds and stars. It was, in fact, everything Miss Lark had said, and more.

The Merry-go-round slowed up and drew to a standstill as they arrived. The Park Keeper ran up officiously and held on to one of the brass poles.

"Come along, come along! Threepence a ride!" he called importantly.

"I know which horse I'll have!" said Michael, dashing up to one painted blue-and-scarlet with the name "Merry-Legs" on its gold collar. He clambered on to its back and seized the pole.

"No Litter Allowed and Observe the Bye-Laws," called the Keeper fussily as Jane sped past him.

"I'll have Twinkle!" she cried, climbing upon the back of a fiery white horse with its name on a red collar.

Then Mary Poppins lifted the Twins from the perambulator and put Barbara in front of Michael and John behind Jane.

"Penny, Tuppeny, Threepenny, Fourpenny or Fivepenny rides?" said the Merry-go-round Attendant, as he came to collect the money.

"Sixpenny," said Mary Poppins, handing him four sixpenny bits.

The children stared, amazed. They had never before had a sixpenny ride on a Merry-go-round.

"No Litter Allowed!" called the Keeper, his eye on the tickets in Mary Poppins' hands.

"But aren't you coming?" Michael called down to her.

"Hold tight, please! Hold tight! I'll take the next turn!" she replied snappily.

There was a hoot from the Merry-go-round's chimney. The music broke out again. And slowly, slowly the horses began to move.

"Hold on, please!" called Mary Poppins sternly.

They held on.

The trees were moving past them. The brass poles slipped up and down through the horses' backs. A dazzle of light fell on them from the rays of the setting sun.

"Sit tight!" came Mary Poppins' voice again.

They sat tight.

Now the trees were moving more swiftly, spinning about them as the Merry-go-round gathered speed. Michael tightened his arm about Barbara's body. Jane flung back her hand and held John firmly. On they rode, turning ever more quickly, with their hair blowing out behind them and the wind sharp on their faces. Round and round went Merry-Legs and Twinkle, with the children on their backs and the Park tipping and rocking, whirling and wheeling about them.

It seemed as if they would never stop, as if there were no such thing as Time, as if the world was nothing but a circle of light and a group of painted horses.

The sun died in the West and the dusk came fluttering down. But still they rode, faster and faster, till at last they could not distinguish tree from sky. The whole broad earth was spinning now about them with a deep, drumming sound like a humming top.

Never again would Jane and Michael and John and Barbara be so close to the centre of the world as they were on that whirling ride. And somehow, it seemed, they knew it.

"For— Never again! Never again!" was the thought in their hearts as the earth whirled about them and they rode through the dropping dusk.

Presently the trees ceased to be a circular green blur and their trunks again became visible. The sky moved away from the earth and the Park stopped spinning. Slower and slower went the horses. And at last the Merry-go-round stood still.

"Come along, come along! Threepence a ride!" the Park Keeper was calling in the distance.

Stiff from their long ride, the four children clambered down. But their eyes were shining and their voices trembled with excitement.

"Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely!" cried Jane, gazing at Mary Poppins with sparkling eyes, as she put John into the perambulator.

"If only we could have gone on for ever!" exclaimed Michael, lifting Barbara in beside him.

Mary Poppins gazed down at them. Her eyes were strangely soft and gentle in the gathering dusk.

"All good things come to an end," she said, for the second time that day.

Then she flung up her head and glanced at the Merry-go-round.

"My turn!" she cried joyfully, as she stooped and took something from the perambulator.

Then she straightened and stood looking at them for a moment — that strange look that seemed to plunge right down inside them and see what they were thinking.

"Michael!" she said, lightly touching his cheek with her hand. "Be good!"

He stared up at her uneasily. Why had she done that? What could be the matter?

"Jane! Take care of Michael and the Twins!" said Mary Poppins. And she lifted Jane's hand and put it gently on the handle of the perambulator.

"All aboard! All aboard!" cried the Ticket Collector.

The lights of the Merry-go-round blazed up.

Mary Poppins turned.

"Coming!" she called, waving her parrot-headed umbrella.

She darted across the little gulf of darkness that lay between the children and the Merry-go-round.

"Mary Poppins!" cried Jane, with a tremble in her voice. For suddenly — she did not know why — she felt afraid.

"Mary Poppins!" shouted Michael, catching Jane's fear.

But Mary Poppins took no notice. She leapt gracefully upon the platform, and, climbing upon the back of a dappled horse called Caramel, she sat down neatly and primly.

"Single or Return?" said the Ticket Collector.

For a moment she appeared to consider the question. She glanced across at the children and back at the Collector.

"You never know," she said, thoughtfully. "It might come in useful. I'll take a Return."

The Ticket Collector snapped a hole in a green ticket and handed it to Mary Poppins. Jane and Michael noticed that she did not pay for it.

The music broke out again, softly at first, then loudly, wildly, triumphantly. Slowly the painted horses began to move.

Mary Poppins, looking straight ahead of her, was borne past the children. The parrot's head of her umbrella nestled under her arm. Her neatly gloved hands were closed on the brass pole. And in front of her, on the horse's neck—

"Michael!" cried Jane, clutching his arm. "Do you see? She must have hidden it under the rug! Her Carpet-bag!"

Michael stared.

"Do you think—?" he began in a whisper.

Jane nodded.

"But — she's wearing the locket! The chain hasn't broken! I distinctly saw it!"

Behind them the Twins began to whimper but Jane and Michael took no notice. They were gazing anxiously at the shining circle of horses.

The Merry-go-round was moving swiftly now, and soon the children could no longer tell which horse was which, nor distinguish Merry-Legs from Twinkle. Everything before them was a blaze of spinning light, except for the dark figure, neat and steady, that ever and again approached them and sped past and disappeared.

Wilder and wilder grew the drumming music. Faster and faster whirled the Merry-go-round. Again the dark shape rode towards them upon the dappled horse. And this time, as she came by, something bright and gleaming broke from her neck and came flying through the air to their feet.

Jane bent and picked it up. It was the gold locket, hanging loosely from its broken golden chain.

"It's true, then, it's true!" came Michael's bursting cry. "Oh, open it, Jane!"

With trembling fingers she pressed the catch and the locket flew open. The flickering light fell across the glass and they saw before them their own pictured faces, clustered about a figure with straight black hair, stern blue eyes, bright pink cheeks, and a nose turning upwards like the nose of a Dutch doll.

"Jane, Michael, John, Barbara and Annabel Banks,

P. L. TRAVERS (1906–1996) was a drama critic, travel essayist, reviewer, lecturer, and the creator of Mary Poppins. Travers wrote eight Mary Poppins books altogether, including Mary Poppins (1934), Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935), Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), and Mary Poppins in the Park (1952), all from Harcourt Brace. Ms. Travers wrote several other children's books as well as adult books, but it is for the character of Mary Poppins that she is best remembered.