More about Mary Poppins / И снова о Мэри Поппинз

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 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.