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  Jane waved to her from the Nursery window.

  "Where are you going?" she called.

  "Kindly close that window," replied Mary Poppins, and Jane's head hurriedly disappeared inside the Nursery.

  Mary Poppins walked down the garden path and opened the gate. Once outside in the Lane, she set off walking very quickly as if she were afraid the afternoon would run away from her if she didn't keep up with it. At the corner she turned to the right and then to the left, nodded haughtily to the Policeman, who said it was a nice day, and by that time she felt that her Day Out had begun.

  She stopped beside an empty motor-car in order to put her hat straight with the help of the wind-screen, in which it was reflected, then she smoothed down her frock and tucked her umbrella more securely under her arm so that the handle, or rather the parrot, could be seen by everybody. After these preparations she went forward to meet the Match-Man.

  Now, the Match-Man had two professions. He not only sold matches like any ordinary match-man, but he drew pavement pictures as well. He did these things turn-about according to the weather. If it was wet, he sold matches because the rain would have washed away his pictures if he had painted them. If it was fine, he was on his knees all day, making pictures in coloured chalks on the side-walks, and doing them so quickly that often you would find he had painted up one side of a street and down the other almost before you'd had time to come round the corner.

  On this particular day, which was fine but cold, he was painting. He was in the act of adding a picture of two bananas, an apple, and a head of Queen Elizabeth to a long string of others, when Mary Poppins walked up to him, tip-toeing so as to surprise him.

  "Hey!" called Mary Poppins softly.

  He went on putting brown stripes on a banana and brown curls on Queen Elizabeth's head.

  "Ahem!" said Mary Poppins, with a ladylike cough.

  He turned with a start and saw her.

  "Mary!" he cried, and you could tell by the way he cried it that Mary Poppins was a very important person in his life.

  Mary Poppins looked down at her feet and rubbed the toe of one shoe along the pavement two or three times. Then she smiled at the shoe in such a way that the shoe knew quite well that the smile wasn't meant for it.

  "It's my Day, Bert," she said. "Didn't you remember?" Bert was the Match-Man's name — Herbert Alfred for Sundays.

  "Of course I remembered, Mary," he said, "but—" and he stopped and looked sadly into his cap. It lay on the ground beside his last picture and there was tuppence in it. He picked it up and jingled the pennies.

  "That all you got, Bert?" said Mary Poppins, and she said it so brightly you could hardly tell she was disappointed at all.

  "That's the lot," he said. "Business is bad today. You'd think anybody'd be glad to pay to see that, wouldn't you?" And he nodded his head at Queen Elizabeth. "Well — that's how it is, Mary," he sighed. "Can't take you to tea today, I'm afraid."

  Mary Poppins thought of the raspberry-jam-cakes they always had on her Day Out, and she was just going to sigh, when she saw the Match-Man's face. So, very cleverly, she turned the sigh into a smile — a good one with both ends turned up — and said:

  That's all right, Bert. Don't you mind. I'd much rather not go to tea. A stodgy meal, I call it — really."

  And that, when you think how very much she liked raspberry-jam-cakes, was rather nice of Mary Poppins.

  The Match-Man apparently thought so, too, for he took her white-gloved hand in his and squeezed it hard. Then together they walked down the row of pictures.

  "Now, there's one you've never seen before!" said the Match-Man proudly, pointing to a painting of a mountain covered with snow and its slopes simply littered with grasshoppers sitting on gigantic roses.

  This time Mary Poppins could indulge in a sigh without hurting his feelings.

  "Oh, 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's 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

  "I'm the Waiter, you know!"

  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.

&nb
sp; "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."

  "Good-bye, and thank you," said Mary Poppins, shaking his hand.

  "Moddom, good-bye!" 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 Fairyland," said Mary Poppins.

  "Did you see Cinderella?" said Jane.

  "Huh, Cinderella? Not me," said Mary Poppins, contemptuously. "Cinderella, indeed!"

  "Or Robinson Crusoe?" asked Michael.

  "Robinson Crusoe — pooh!" said Mary Poppins rudely.

  "Then how could you have been there? It couldn't have been our Fairyland!"

  Mary Poppins gave a superior sniff.

  "Don't you know," she said pityingly, "that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own?"

  And with another sniff she went upstairs to take off her white gloves and put the umbrella away.

  CHAPTER 3

  LAUGHING GAS

  ARE YOU QUITE sure he will be at home?" said Jane, as they got off the Bus, she and Michael and Mary Poppins.

  "Would my Uncle ask me to bring you to tea if he intended to go out, I'd like to know?" said Mary Poppins, who was evidently very offended by the question. She was wearing her blue coat with the silver buttons and the blue hat to match, and on the days when she wore these it was the easiest thing in the world to offend her.

  All three of them were on the way to pay a visit to Mary Poppins's uncle, Mr. Wigg, and Jane and Michael had looked forward to the trip for so long that they were more than half afraid that Mr. Wigg might not be in, after all.

  "Why is he called Mr. Wigg — does he wear one?" asked Michael, hurrying along beside Mary Poppins.

  "He is called Mr. Wigg because Mr. Wigg is his name. And he doesn't wear one. He is bald," said Mary Poppins. "And if I have any more questions we will just go Back Home." And she sniffed her usual sniff of displeasure.

  Jane and Michael looked at each other and frowned. And the frown meant: "Don't let's ask her anything else or we'll never get there."

  Mary Poppins put her hat straight at the Tobacconist's Shop at the corner. It had one of those curious windows where there seem to be three of you instead of one, so that if you look long enough at them you begin to feel you are not yourself but a whole crowd of somebody else. Mary Poppins sighed with pleasure, however, when she saw three of herself, each wearing a blue coat with silver buttons and a blue hat to match. She thought it was such a lovely sight that she wished there had been a dozen of her or even thirty. The more Mary Poppins the better.

  "Come along," she said sternly, as though they had kept her waiting. Then they turned the corner and pulled the bell of Number Three, Robertson Road. Jane and Michael could hear it faintly echoing from a long way away and they knew that in one minute, or two at the most, they would be having tea with Mary Poppins's uncle, Mr. Wigg, for the first time ever.

  "If he's in, of course," Jane said to Michael in a whisper.

  At that moment the door flew open and a thin, watery-looking lady appeared.

  "Is he in?" said Michael quickly.

  "I'll thank you," said Mary Poppins, giving him a terrible glance, "to let me do the talking."

  "How do you do, Mrs. Wigg," said Jane politely.

  "Mrs. Wigg!" said the thin lady, in a voice even thinner than herself. "How dare you call me Mrs. Wigg! No, thank you! I'm plain Miss Persimmon and proud of it. Mrs. Wigg indeed!" She seemed to be quite upset, and they thought Mr. Wigg must be a very odd person if Miss Persimmon was so glad not to be Mrs. Wigg.

  "Straight up and first door on the landing," said Miss Persimmon, and she went hurrying away down the passage saying: "Mrs. Wigg indeed!" to herself in a high, thin, outraged voice.

  Jane and Michael followed Mary Poppins upstairs. Mary Poppins knocked at the door.

  "Come in! Come in! And welcome!" called a loud, cheery voice from inside. Jane's heart was pitter-pattering with excitement.

  "He is in!" she signalled to Michael with a look.

  Mary Poppins opened the door and pushed them in front of her. A large cheerful room lay before them. At one end of it a fire was burning brightly and in the centre stood an enormous table laid for tea — four cups and saucers, piles of bread and butter, crumpets, coconut cakes and a large plum cake with pink icing.

  "Well, this is indeed a Pleasure," a huge voice greeted them, and Jane and Michael looked round for its owner. He was nowhere to be seen. The room appeared to be quite empty. Then they heard Mary Poppins saying crossly:

  "Oh, Uncle Albert — not again? It's not your birthday, is it?"

  And as she spoke she looked up at the ceiling. Jane and Michael looked up too and to their surprise saw a round, fat, bald man who was hanging in the air without holding on to anything. Indeed, he appeared to be sitting on the air, for his legs were crossed and he had just put down the newspaper which he had been reading when they came in.

  "My dear," said Mr. Wigg, smiling down at the children, and looking apologetically at Mary Poppins, "I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid it
is my birthday."

  "Tch, tch, tch!" said Mary Poppins.

  "I only remembered last night and there was no time then to send you a postcard asking you to come another day. Very distressing, isn't it?" he said, looking down at Jane and Michael.

  "I can see you're rather surprised," said Mr. Wigg. And, indeed, their mouths were so wide open with astonishment that Mr. Wigg, if he had been a little smaller, might almost have fallen into one of them.

  "I'd better explain, I think," Mr. Wigg went on calmly. "You see, it's this way. I'm a cheerful sort of man and very disposed to laughter. You wouldn't believe, either of you, the number of things that strike me as being funny. I can laugh at pretty nearly everything, I can."

  And with that Mr. Wigg began to bob up and down, shaking with laughter at the thought of his own cheerfulness.

  "Uncle Albert!" said Mary Poppins, and Mr. Wigg stopped laughing with a jerk.

  "Oh, beg pardon, my dear. Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, the funny thing about me is — all right, Mary, I won't laugh if I can help it! — that whenever my birthday falls on a Friday, well, it's all up with me. Absolutely U.P.," said Mr. Wigg.

  "But why—?" began Jane.

  "But how—?" began Michael.

  "Well, you see, if I laugh on that particular day I become so filled with Laughing Gas that I simply can't keep on the ground. Even if I smile it happens. The first funny thought, and I'm up like a balloon. And until I can think of something serious I can't get down again." Mr. Wigg began to chuckle at that, but he caught sight of Mary Poppins's face and stopped the chuckle, and continued:

  "It's awkward, of course, but not unpleasant. Never happens to either of you, I suppose?"

  Jane and Michael shook their heads.

  "No, I thought not. It seems to be my own special habit. Once, after I'd been to the Circus the night before, I laughed so much that — would you believe it? — I was up here for a whole twelve hours, and couldn't get down till the last stroke of midnight. Then, of course, I came down with a flop because it was Saturday and not my birthday any more. It's rather odd, isn't it? Not to say funny?