Mary Poppins Comes Back (16 page)

"You won't be lonely?" the Fool enquired.

"Oh, dear, no. Why should I be? It is very quiet and pleasant up here. And I can always think—or, better still, go to sleep." And as he said that he stretched himself out upon the rainbow with his cloak under his head.

The Fool bent down and kissed him.

"Good-bye, then, King," he said softly. "For you no longer have any need of me."

He left the King quietly sleeping and went whistling down the other side of the rainbow.

And from there he went wandering the world again, as he had done in the days before he met the King, singing and whistling and taking no thought for anything but the immediate moment.

Sometimes he took service with other Kings and high people, and sometimes he went among ordinary men living in small streets or lanes. Sometimes he would be wearing gorgeous livery and sometimes clothes as poor as any one ever stood up in. But no matter where he went he brought good fortune and great luck to the house that roofed him——

Mary Poppins ceased speaking. For a moment her hands lay still in her lap and her eyes gazed out un-seeingly across the Lake.

Then she sighed and gave her shoulders a little shake and stood up.

"Now then!" she said briskly, "Best Feet Forward! And off home!"

She turned to find Jane's eyes fixed steadily upon her.

"You'll know me next time, I hope!" she remarked tartly. "And you, Michael, get down off that seat at once! Do you want to break your neck and give me the trouble of calling a Policeman?"

She strapped the Twins into the perambulator and pushed it in front of her with a quick impatient movement.

Jane and Michael fell into step behind.

"I wonder where the King of the Castle went when the rainbow disappeared?" said Michael thoughtfully.

"He went with it, I suppose, wherever it goes," said Jane. "But what I wonder is—what happened to the Rascal?"

Mary Poppins had wheeled the perambulator into the Elm Walk. And as the children turned the corner, Michael caught Jane's hand.

"There he is!" he cried excitedly, pointing down the Elm Walk to the Park Gates.

A tall slim figure, curiously dressed in red-and-yellow, was swaggering towards the entrance. He stood for a moment, looking up and down Cherry Tree Lane, and whistling. Then he slouched across to the opposite pavement and swung himself lazily over one of the garden fences.

"It's ours!" said Jane, recognising it by the brick that had always been missing. "He's gone into our garden. Run, Michael. Let's catch up with him!"

They ran at a gallop after Mary Poppins and the perambulator.

"Now then, now then! No horse-play, please!" said Mary Poppins, grabbing Michael's arm firmly as he rushed by.

"But we want——" he began, squirming.

"
What did I say?
" she demanded, glaring at him so fiercely that he dared not disobey. "Walk beside me, please, like a Christian. And Jane, you can help me push the pram!"

Unwillingly Jane fell into step beside her.

As a rule, Mary Poppins allowed nobody to push the perambulator except herself. But to-day it seemed to Jane that she was purposely preventing them from running ahead. For here was Mary Poppins, who usually walked so quickly that it was difficult to keep up with her, going at a snail's pace down the Elm Walk, pausing every few minutes to gaze about her, and standing for at least a minute in front of a basket of litter.

At last, after what seemed to them like hours, they came to the Park Gates. She kept them beside her until they reached the gate of Number Seventeen. Then they broke from her and went flying through the garden.

They darted behind the lilac tree. Not there! They searched among the rhododendrons and looked in the glasshouse, the tool-shed and the water-butt. They even peered into a circle of hose-piping. The Dirty Rascal was nowhere to be seen!

There was only one other person in the garden and that was Robertson Ay. He was sound asleep in the middle of the lawn with his cheek against the knives of the lawn-mower.

"We've missed him!" said Michael. "He must have taken a short-cut and gone out by the back way. Now we'll never see him again."

He turned back to the lawn-mower.

Jane was standing beside it, looking down affectionately at Robertson Ay. His old felt hat was pulled over his face, its crown crushed and dented into a curving peak.

"I wonder if he had a good Half-day!" said Michael, whispering so as not to disturb him.

But, small as the whisper was, Robertson Ay must have heard it. For he suddenly stirred in his sleep and settled himself more comfortably against the lawnmower. And as he moved there was a faint, jingling sound as though, near at hand, small bells were softly ringing.

With a start, Jane lifted her head and glanced at Michael.

"Did you hear?" she whispered.

He nodded, staring.

Robertson Ay moved again and muttered in his sleep. They bent to listen.

"Black and white cow," he murmured indistinctly. "Sat up in a tree ... mumble, mumble, mumble ... it couldn't be me! Hum...!"

Across his sleeping body Jane and Michael gazed at each other with wondering eyes.

"Humph! Well to be him, I must say!"

Mary Poppins had come up behind them and she too was staring down at Robertson Ay. "The lazy, idle, Good-for-Nothing!" she said crossly.

But she couldn't really have been as cross as she sounded for she took her handkerchief out of her pocket and slipped it between Robertson Ay's cheek and the lawn-mower.

"He'll have a clean face, anyway, when he wakes up,
That'll
surprise him!" she said tartly.

But Jane and Michael noticed how careful she had been not to wake Robertson Ay and how soft her eyes were when she turned away.

They tip-toed after her, nodding wisely to one another. Each knew that the other understood.

Mary Poppins trundled the perambulator up the steps and into the hall. The front door shut with a quiet little click.

Outside in the garden Robertson Ay slept on.

***

That night when Jane and Michael went to say good-night to him, Mr. Banks was in a towering rage. He was dressing to go out to dinner and he couldn't find his best stud.

"Well, by all that's lively, here it is!" he cried suddenly. "In a tin of stove-blacking—of all things! on my dressing-table. That Robertson Ay's doing. I'll sack that fellow one of these days. He's nothing but a dirty rascal!"

And he could not understand why Jane and Michael, when he said that, burst into such peals of joyous laughter....

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.