More about Mary Poppins / И снова о Мэри Поппинз

” She spoke very mournfully, as though she were unused to such a courteous greeting.

“It’s a lovely day – ” began Jane politely to the other sister, who kept Jane’s hand imprisoned for almost a minute in her huge clasp.

“I’m Annie,” she informed them miserably. “And handsome is as handsome does.”

Jane and Michael thought that both the sisters had a very odd way of expressing themselves, but they had not time to be surprised for long, for Miss Fannie and Miss Annie were reaching out their long arms to the perambulator.

Each shook hands solemnly with one of the Twins, who were so astonished that they began to cry.

“Now, now, now, now!* What’s this, what’s this?” A high, thin, crackly little voice came from the back of the shop. At the sound of it the expression on the faces of Miss Fannie and Miss Annie, sad before, became even sadder. They seemed frightened and ill at ease, and somehow Jane and Michael realised that the two huge sisters were wishing that they were much smaller and less conspicuous.

“What’s all this I hear?” cried the curious high little voice, coming nearer. And presently, round the corner of the glass case the owner of it appeared. She was as small as her voice and as crackly, and to the children she seemed to be older than anything in the world, with her wispy hair and her stick-like legs and her wizened, wrinkled little face. But in spite of this she ran towards them as lightly and as gaily as though she were still a young girl.

“Now, now, now – well, I do declare! Bless me if it isn’t Mary Poppins, with John and Barbara Banks. What – Jane and Michael, too? Well, isn’t this a nice surprise for me? I assure you I haven’t been so surprised since Christopher Columbus discovered America – truly I haven’t!”

She smiled delightedly as she came to greet them, and her feet made little dancing movements inside the tiny elastic-sided boots.

She ran to the perambulator and rocked it gently, crooking her thin, twisted, old fingers at John and Barbara until they stopped crying and began to laugh.

“That’s better!” she said, cackling gaily. Then she did a very odd thing. She broke off two of her fingers and gave one each to John and Barbara. And the oddest part of it was that in the space left by the broken-off fingers two new ones grew at once. Jane and Michael clearly saw it happen.