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 do 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 mantelpiece trembled. The empty Marmalade Jar hopped and shook and shivered; John’s hair-brush, left there over-night, danced on 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 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. “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!”