But if I were—” Was she smiling or not? He couldn’t be sure, with his nose pressed into the earth.
“Well – what would you do?” she enquired, with a sniff.
He wanted to say that if he were a dog he would do just as he liked – swim or not, as the mood took him, without asking leave of anyone. But what if her face was looking fierce? Silence was best, he decided.
“Nothing!” he said, in a meek voice. “It’s too hot to argue, Mary Poppins!”
“Out of nothing comes nothing!” She tossed her head in its tulip hat. “And I’m not arguing, I’m talking!” She was having the last word, as usual.
The sunlight caught her knitting-needles as it shone through the broad magnolia leaves on the little group below. John and Barbara, leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders, were dozing and waking, waking and dozing. Annabel was fast asleep in Mary Poppins’ shadow. Light and darkness dappled them all and splotched the face of the Park Keeper as he dived at a piece of newspaper.
“All Litter to be placed in the Baskets! Obey the Rules!” he said sternly.
Mary Poppins looked him up and down. Her glance would have withered an oak-tree.
“That’s not my litter,” she retorted.
“Oh?” he said disbelievingly.
“No!” she replied, with a virtuous snort.
“Well, someone must ’ave put it there. It doesn’t grow – like roses!”
He pushed his cap to the back of his head and mopped behind his ears. What with the heat, and her tone of voice, he was feeling quite depressed.
“’Ot weather we’re ’avin’!” he remarked, eyeing her nervously. He looked like an eager, lonely dog.
“That’s what we expect in the middle of summer!” Her knitting-needles clicked.
The Park Keeper sighed and tried again.
“I see you brought yer parrot!” he said, glancing up at the black silk shape that hung among the leaves.
“You mean my parrot-headed umbrella,” she haughtily corrected him.
He gave a little anxious laugh. “You don’t think it’s going to rain, do you? With all this sun about?”
“I don’t think, I know,” she told him calmly. “And if I,” she went on, “were a Park Keeper, I wouldn’t be wasting half the day like some people I could mention! There’s a piece of orange peel over there – why don’t you pick it up?”
She pointed with her knitting-needle and kept it pointing accusingly while he speared up the offending litter and tossed it into a basket.
“If she was me,” he said to himself, “there’d be no Park at all. Only a nice tidy desert!” He fanned his face with his cap.
“And anyway,” he said aloud, “it’s no fault of mine I’m a Park Keeper. I should ’ave been a Nexplorer by rights, away in foreign parts. If I’d ’ad me way I wouldn’t be ’ere. I’d be sittin’ on a piece of ice along with a Polar Bear!”
He sighed and leant upon his stick, falling into a daydream.
“Humph!” said Mary Poppins loudly. And a startled dove in the tree above her ruffled its wing in surprise.
A feather came slowly drifting down. Jane stretched out her hand and caught it.
“How deliciously it tickles!” she murmured, running the grey edge over her nose. Then she tucked the feather above her brow and bound her ribbon round it.
“I’m the daughter of an Indian Chief. Minnehaha, Laughing Water, gliding along the river.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” contradicted Michael. “You’re Jane Caroline Banks.”
“That’s only my outside,” she insisted. “Inside I’m somebody quite different. It’s a very funny feeling.”
“You should have eaten a bigger lunch. Then you wouldn’t have funny feelings. And Daddy’s not an Indian Chief, so you can’t be Minnehaha!”
He gave a sudden start as he spoke and peered more closely into the grass.
“There he goes!” he shouted wildly, wriggling forward on his stomach and thumping his toes.
“I’ll thank you, Michael,” said Mary Poppins, “to stop kicking my shins. What are you – a Performing Horse?”
“Not a horse, a hunter, Mary Poppins! I’m tracking in the jungle!”
“Jungles!” scoffed the Park Keeper. “My vote is for snowy wastes!”
“If you’re not careful, Michael Banks, you’ll be tracking home to bed. I never knew such a silly pair. And you’re the third,” snapped Mary Poppins, eyeing the Park Keeper. “Always wanting to be something else instead of what you are. If it’s not Miss Minne-what’s-her-name, it’s this or that or the other. You’re as bad as the Goose-girl and the Swineherd!”
“But it isn’t geese or swine I’m after. It’s a lion, Mary Poppins. He may be only an ant on the outside but inside – ah, at last, I’ve got him! – inside he’s a man-eater!”
Michael rolled over, red in the face, holding something small and black between his finger and thumb.
“Jane,” he began in an eager voice. But the sentence was never finished. For Jane was making signs to him, and as he turned to Mary Poppins he understood their meaning.
Her knitting had fallen on the rug and her hands lay folded in her lap. She was looking at something far away, beyond the Lane, beyond the Park, perhaps beyond the horizon.
Carefully, so as not to disturb her, the children crept to her side. The Park Keeper plumped himself down on the rug and stared at her, goggle-eyed.
“Yes, Mary Poppins?” prompted Jane. “The Goose-girl – tell us about her!”
Michael pressed against her skirt and waited expectantly. He could feel her legs, bony and strong, beneath the cool blue linen.
From under the shadow of her hat she glanced at them for a short moment and looked away again.
“Well, there she sat,” she began gravely, speaking in the soft accents that were so unlike her usual voice.
“There she sat, day after day, amid her flock of geese, braiding her hair and unbraiding it for lack of something to do. Sometimes she would pick a fern and wave it before her like a fan, the way the Lord Chancellor’s wife might do, or even the Queen, maybe.
“Or again, she would weave a necklace of flowers and go to the brook to admire it. And every time she did that she noticed that her eyes were blue – bluer than any periwinkle – and her cheeks like the breast of a robin. As for her mouth – not to mention her nose! – her opinion of these was so high she had no words fit to describe them.”
“She sounds like you, Mary Poppins,” said Michael. “So terribly pleased with herself!”
Her glance came darting from the horizon and flickered at him fiercely.
“I mean, Mary Poppins—” he began to stammer. Had he broken the thread of the story?
“I mean,” he went on flatteringly, “you’ve got pink cheeks and blue eyes too. Like lollipops and bluebells.”
A slow smile of satisfaction melted her angry look, and Michael gave a sigh of relief as she took up the tale again.
Well, she went on, there was the brook, and there was the Goose-girl’s reflection. And each time she looked at it she was sorry for everyone in the world who was missing such a spectacle. And she pitied in particular the handsome Swineherd who herded his flock on the other