More about Mary Poppins / И снова о Мэри Поппинз

The Fishmonger, unlike the Butcher, was a long thin man, so thin that he seemed to have no front to him but only two sides. And he looked so sad that you felt he had either just been weeping or was just going to. Jane said that this was due to some secret sorrow that had haunted him since his youth, and Michael thought that the Fishmonger’s Mother must have fed him entirely on bread and water when he was a baby, and that he had never forgotten it.

“Anything else?” said the Fishmonger hopelessly, in a voice that suggested he was quite sure there wouldn’t be.

“Not today,” said Mary Poppins.

The Fishmonger shook his head sadly and did not look at all surprised. He had known all along there would be nothing else.

Sniffing gently, he tied up the parcel and dropped it into the perambulator.

“Bad weather,” he observed, wiping his eye with his hand. “Don’t believe we’re going to get any summer at all – not that we ever did, of course. You don’t look too blooming,” he said to Mary Poppins.

Mary Poppins tossed her head.

“Speak for yourself,” she said crossly, and flounced to the door, pushing the perambulator so fiercely that it bumped into a bag of oysters.

“The idea!” Jane and Michael heard her say as she glanced down at her shoes. Not looking too blooming in her new brown kid shoes with two buttons – the idea! That was what they heard her thinking.

Outside on the pavement she paused, looking at her list and ticking off* what she had bought.

“Mary Poppins, are we never going home?” he said crossly.

Mary Poppins turned and regarded him with something like disgust.

“That,” she said briefly, “is as it may be.” And Michael, watching her fold up her list, wished he had not spoken.

“You can go home, if you like,” she said haughtily. “We are going to buy the gingerbread*.”

Michael’s face fell.

“That’s your way,” said Mary Poppins shortly, pointing in the direction of Cherry-Tree Lane. “If you don’t get lost,” she added as an afterthought.

“Oh no, Mary Poppins, please, no! I didn’t mean it, really. I – oh – Mary Poppins, please – ” cried Michael.

“Do let him come, Mary Poppins!” said Jane.