Bert,” she said, “that’s a fair treat!” And by the way she said it she made him feel that by rights the picture should have been in the Royal Academy, which is a large room where people hang the pictures they have painted. Everybody comes to see them, and when they have looked at them for a very long time, everybody says to everybody else: “The idea – my dear!”
The next picture Mary Poppins and the Match Man came to was even better. It was the country – all trees and grass and a little bit of blue sea in the distance, and something that looked like Margate in the background.
“My word!” said Mary Poppins admiringly, stooping so that she could see it better. “Why, Bert, whatever is the matter?”
For the Match Man had caught hold of her other hand now and was looking very excited.
“Mary,” he said, “I got an idea! A real idea. Why don’t we go there – right now – this very day? Both together, into the picture. Eh, Mary?” And still holding her hands he drew her right out of the street, away from the iron railings and the lamp-posts, into the very middle of the picture. Pff! There they were, right inside it!
How green it was there and how quiet, and what soft crisp grass under their feet! They could hardly believe it was true, and yet here were green branches huskily rattling on their hats as they bent beneath them, and little coloured flowers curling round their shoes. They stared at each other, and each noticed that the other had changed. To Mary Poppins, the Match Man seemed to have bought himself an entirely new suit of clothes, for he was now wearing a bright green-and-red striped coat and white flannel trousers and, best of all, a new straw hat. He looked unusually clean, as though he had been polished.
“Why, Bert, you look fine!” she cried in an admiring voice.
Bert could not say anything for a moment, for his mouth had fallen open and he was staring at her with round eyes. Then he gulped and said: “Golly!”
That was all. But he said it in such a way and stared so steadily and so delightedly at her that she took a little mirror out of her bag and looked at herself in it.
She, too, she discovered, had changed. Round her shoulders hung a cloak of lovely artificial silk with watery patterns all over it, and the tickling feeling at the back of her neck came, the mirror told her, from a long curly feather that swept down from the brim of her hat. Her best shoes had disappeared, and in their place were others much finer and with large diamond buckles shining upon them. She was still wearing the white gloves and carrying the umbrella.
“My goodness,” said Mary Poppins, “I am having a Day Out!”
So, still admiring themselves and each other, they moved on together through the little wood, till presently they came upon a little open space filled with sunlight. And there on a green table was Afternoon Tea!
A pile of raspberry-jam cakes as high as Mary Poppins’ waist stood in the centre, and beside it tea was boiling in a big brass urn. Best of all, there were two plates of whelks and two pins to pick them out with.
“Strike me pink!” said Mary Poppins. That was what she always said when she was pleased.
“Golly!” said the Match Man. And that was his particular phrase.
“Won’t you sit down, Moddom?” enquired a voice, and they turned to find a tall man in a black coat coming out of the wood with a table napkin over his arm.
Mary Poppins, thoroughly surprised, sat down with a plop upon one of the little green chairs that stood round the table. The Match Man, staring, collapsed on to another.
“I’m the Waiter, you know!” explained the man in the black coat.
“Oh! But I didn’t see you in the picture,” said Mary Poppins.
“Ah, I was behind the tree,” explained the Waiter.
“Won’t you sit down?” said Mary Poppins, politely.
“Waiters never sit down, Moddom,” said the man but he seemed pleased at being asked.
“Your whelks, Mister!” he said, pushing a plate of them over to the Match Man. “And your Pin!” He dusted the pin on his napkin and handed it to the Match Man.
They began upon the afternoon tea, and the Waiter stood beside them to see they had everything they needed.
“We’re having them after all,” said Mary Poppins in a loud whisper, as she began on the heap of raspberry-jam cakes.
“Golly!” agreed the Match Man, helping himself to two of the largest.
“Tea?” said the Waiter, filling a large cup for each of them from the urn.
They drank it and had two cups more each, and then, for luck, they finished the pile of raspberry-jam cakes. After that they got up and brushed the crumbs off.
“There is Nothing to Pay,” said the Waiter, before they had time to ask for the bill. “It is a Pleasure. You will find the Merry-go-Round just over there!” And he waved his hand to a little gap in the trees, where Mary Poppins and the Match Man could see several wooden horses whirling round on a stand.
“That’s funny,” said she. “I don’t remember seeing that in the picture, either.”
“Ah,” said the Match Man, who hadn’t remembered it himself, “it was in the Background, you see!”
The Merry-go-Round was just slowing down as they approached it. They leapt upon it, Mary Poppins on a black horse and the Match Man on a grey. And when the music started again and they began to move, they rode all the way to Yarmouth and back, because that was the place they both wanted most to see.
When they returned it was nearly dark and the Waiter was watching for them.
“I’m very sorry, Moddom and Mister,” he said politely, “but we close at Seven. Rules, you know. May I show you the Way Out?”
They nodded as he flourished his table-napkin and walked on in front of them through the wood.
“It’s a wonderful picture you’ve drawn this time, Bert,” said Mary Poppins, putting her hand through the Match Man’s arm and drawing her cloak about her.
“Well, I did my best, Mary,” said the Match Man modestly. But you could see he was really very pleased with himself indeed.
Just then the Waiter stopped in front of them, beside a large white doorway that looked as though it were made of thick chalk lines.
“Here you are!” he said. “This is the Way Out.”
“Goodbye and thank you,” said Mary Poppins, shaking his hand.
“Moddom, goodbye!” said the Waiter, bowing so low that his head knocked against his knees.
He nodded to the Match Man, who cocked his head on one side and closed one eye at the Waiter, which was his way of bidding him farewell. Then Mary Poppins stepped through the white doorway and the Match Man followed her.
And as they went, the feather dropped from her hat and the silk cloak from her shoulders and the diamonds from her shoes. The bright clothes of the Match Man faded, and his straw hat turned into his old ragged cap again. Mary Poppins turned and looked at him, and she knew at once what had happened. Standing on the pavement she gazed at him for a long minute, and then her glance explored the wood behind him for the Waiter. But the Waiter was nowhere to be seen. There was nobody in the picture. Nothing moved there. Even the Merry-go-Round had disappeared. Only the still trees and the grass and the unmoving little patch of sea remained.
But Mary Poppins and the Match Man smiled at one another. They knew, you see, what lay behind the trees …
When she came back from her Day Out, Jane and Michael came running to meet her.
“Where have you been?” they asked her.
“In