More about Mary Poppins / И снова о Мэри Поппинз

“I like that,” said Mary Poppins, turning round quickly. “What about yourself? All day long – yes, and half the night, too, on the roofs and telegraph poles. Roaring and screaming and shouting – you’d talk the leg off a chair,* you would. Worse than any sparrer, and that’s the truth.”

The Starling cocked his head on one side and looked down at her from his perch on the window-frame.

“Well,” he said, “I have my business to attend to. Consultations, discussions, arguments, bargaining.

“Quiet!” exclaimed John, laughing heartily.

“And I wasn’t talking to you, young man,” said the Starling, hopping down on to the window-sill. “And you needn’t talk – anyway. I heard you for several hours on end last Saturday week. Goodness, I thought you’d never stop – you kept me awake all night.”

“That wasn’t talking,” said John. “I was – ” He paused.

“Humph!” said the Starling, and hopped on to the railing of Barbara’s cot. He sidled along it until he came to the head of the cot. Then he said in a soft, wheedling voice,

“Well, Barbara B.,* anything for the old fellow today, eh?”

Barbara pulled herself into a sitting position by holding on to one of the bars of her cot.

“There’s the other half of my arrowroot biscuit,” she said, and held it out in her round, fat fist.

The Starling swooped down, plucked it out of her hand and flew back to the window-sill. He began nibbling it greedily.

“Thank you!” said Mary Poppins, meaningly, but the Starling was too busy eating to notice the rebuke.

“I said �Thank you!’” said Mary Poppins a little louder.

The Starling looked up.

“Eh – what? Oh, get along, girl, get along. I’ve no time for such frills and furbelows*.” And he gobbled up the last of his biscuit.

The room was very quiet.

John, drowsing in the sunlight, put the toes of his right foot into his mouth and ran them along the place where his teeth were just beginning to come through.

“Why do you bother to do that?” said Barbara, in her soft, amused voice that seemed always to be full of laughter. “There’s nobody to see you.”

“I know,” said John, playing a tune on his toes. “But I like to keep in practice. It does so amuse the Grown-ups.