Mary Poppins Comes Back (6 page)

Mary Poppins fixed her with a look. From half-closed eyes, she gazed revengefully at Miss Andrew for a long moment.

"You said I didn't know how to bring up children," she said, speaking slowly and distinctly.

Miss Andrew shrank back, trembling with fear.

"I—I apologise," she said, gulping.

"That I was impudent, incapable, and totally unreliable," said the quiet, implacable voice.

Miss Andrew cowered beneath the steady gaze.

"It was a mistake. I—I'm sorry," she stammered.

"That I was a Young Person!" continued Mary Poppins, remorselessly.

"I take it back," panted Miss Andrew. "All of it. Only let me go. I ask nothing more." She clasped her hands and gazed at Mary Poppins, imploringly.

"I can't stay here," she whispered. "No, no! Not here! I beg you to let me go!"

Mary Poppins gazed at her, long and thoughtfully. Then with a little outward movement of her hand, "Go!" she said.

Miss Andrew gave a gasp of relief. "Oh, thank you! Thank you!" Still keeping her eyes fixed on Mary Poppins she staggered backwards down the steps, then she turned and went stumbling unevenly down the garden path.

The Taxi-man, who all this time had been unloading the luggage, was starting up his engine and preparing to depart.

Miss Andrew held up a trembling hand.

"Wait!" she cried brokenly. "Wait for me. You shall have a ten shilling note for yourself if you will drive me away at once."

The man stared at her.

"I mean it!" she said urgently. "See," she fumbled feverishly in her pocket, "here it is. Take it—and drive on!"

Miss Andrew tottered into the cab and collapsed upon the seat.

The Taxi-man, still gaping, closed the door upon her.

Then he began hurriedly re-loading the luggage. Robertson Ay had fallen asleep across a pile of trunks, but the Taxi-man did not stop to wake him. He swept him off on to the path and finished the work himself.

"Looks as though the 'ol' girl 'ad 'ad a shock! I never saw anybody take on so. Never!" he murmured to himself as he drove off.

But what kind of a shock it was the Taxi-man did not know and, if he lived to be a hundred, could not possibly guess....

"Where is Miss Andrew?" said Mrs. Banks, hurrying to the front door in search of the visitor.

"Gone," said Michael.

"What do you mean—gone?" Mrs. Banks looked very surprised.

"She didn't seem to want to stay," said Jane.

Mrs. Banks frowned.

"What does this mean, Mary Poppins?" she demanded.

"I couldn't say, m'm, I'm sure," said Mary Poppins, calmly, as though the matter did not interest her. She glanced down at her new blouse and smoothed out a crease.

Mrs. Banks looked from one to the other and shook her head.

"How very extraordinary! I can't understand it."

Just then the garden gate opened and shut with a quiet little click. Mr. Banks came tip-toeing up the path. He hesitated and waited nervously on one foot as they all turned towards him.

"Well? Has she come?" he said anxiously, in a loud whisper.

"She has come and gone," said Mrs. Banks.

Mr. Banks stared.

"Gone? Do you mean—really gone? Miss Andrew?"

Mrs. Banks nodded.

"Oh, joy, joy!" cried Mr. Banks, and seizing the skirts of his waterproof in both hands he proceeded to dance the Highland Fling in the middle of the path. He stopped suddenly.

"But how? When? Why?" he asked.

"Just now—in a taxi. Because the children were rude to her, I suppose. She complained to me about them. I simply can't think of any other reason. Can you, Mary Poppins?"

"No, m'm, I can't," said Mary Poppins, brushing a speck of dust off her blouse with great care.

Mr. Banks turned to Jane and Michael with a sorrowful look on his face.

"You were rude to Miss Andrew? My Governess? That dear old soul? I'm ashamed of you both—thoroughly ashamed." He spoke sternly, but there was a laughing twinkle in his eyes.

"I'm a most unfortunate man," he went on, putting his hands into his pockets. "Here am I slaving day in and day out to bring you up properly, and how do you repay me? By being rude to Miss Andrew! It's shameful! It's outrageous. I don't know that I shall ever be able to forgive you. But——" he continued, taking two sixpences out of his pocket and solemnly offering one to each of them, "I shall do my best to forget!"

He turned away smiling.

"Hullo!" he remarked, stumbling against the bird-cage. "Where did this come from? Whose is it?"

Jane and Michael and Mary Poppins were silent.

"Well, never mind," said Mr. Banks. "It's mine now. I shall keep it in the garden and train my sweet-peas over it."

And he went off, carrying the bird-cage and whistling very happily....

"Well," said Mary Poppins, sternly, as she followed them into the Nursery. "This is nice goings on, I must say. You behaving so rudely to your Father's guest."

"But we weren't rude," Michael protested. "I only said she was a Holy Terror and he called her that himself."

"Sending her away like that when she'd only just come—don't you call that rude?" demanded Mary Poppins.

"But we didn't," said Jane. "It was you——"

"
I
was rude to your Father's guest?" Mary Poppins, with her hands on her hips, eyed Jane furiously. "Do you dare to stand there and tell me that?"

"No, no! You weren't rude, but——"

"I should think not, indeed," retorted Mary Poppins, taking off her hat and unfolding her apron. "
I
was properly brought up!" she added sniffing, as she began to undress the Twins.

Michael sighed. He knew it was no use arguing with Mary Poppins.

He glanced at Jane. She was turning her sixpence over and over in her hand.

"Michael!" she said. "I've been thinking."

"What?"

"Daddy gave us these because he thought
we
sent Miss Andrew away."

"I know."

"And we didn't. It was Mary Poppins!"

Michael shuffled his feet.

"Then you think——" he began uneasily, hoping she didn't mean what he thought she meant.

"Yes, I do," said Jane nodding.

"But—but I wanted to spend mine."

"So did I. But it wouldn't be fair. They're hers really."

Michael thought about it for a long time. Then he sighed.

"All right," he said regretfully and took his sixpence out of his pocket.

They went together to Mary Poppins.

Jane held out the coins.

"Here you are!" she said, breathlessly, "we think you should have them."

Mary Poppins took the sixpences and turned them over and over on her palm—heads first and then tails. Then her eye caught theirs and it seemed to them that her look plunged right down inside them and
saw
what they were thinking. For a long time she stood there, staring down into their thoughts.

"Humph!" she said at last, slipping the sixpences into her apron pocket. "Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves."

"I expect you'll find them very useful," said Michael, gazing sadly at the pocket.

"I expect I shall," she retorted tartly, as she went to turn on the bath....

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.