Mary Poppins in the Park

life, had she seen two happier creatures.

'He reminds me of somebody!' she exclaimed, as she gazed at the smiling huntsman. Such a manly figure he looked, too, in his spruce blue jacket and black top-boots.

'Yes,' agreed Michael. 'Who can it be?'

He frowned as he tried to recall the name. Then he looked at his half of the china pair and gave a cry of dismay.

'Oh! Jane! What a pity! My lion has lost his huntsman!'

It was true. There stood another banana tree, there sat another painted lion. But in the other huntsman's place there was only a gap of roughened china. All that remained of his manly shape was one black shiny boot.

'Poor lion!' said Michael. 'He looks so sad!'

And, indeed, there was no denying it. Jane's lion was wreathed in smiles, but his brother had such a dejected look that he seemed to be almost in tears.

'You'll be looking sad in a minute — unless you get ready for lunch!'

Mary Poppins' face was so like her voice that they ran to obey her without a word.

But they caught a glimpse, as they rushed away, of her starched white figure standing there, with its arms full of crumpled paper. She was gazing with a reflective smile at Miss Andrew's broken treasure — and it seemed to them that her lips moved.

Michael gave Jane a fleeting grin.

'I expect she's only saying 'Humph!''

But Jane was not so sure….

'Let's go to the swings,' suggested Michael, as they hurried across the Lane after lunch.

'Oh, no! The Lake. I'm tired of swinging.'

'Neither swings nor lakes,' said Mary Poppins. 'We are taking the Long Walk!'

'Oh, Mary Poppins,' grumbled Jane, 'the Long Walk's far too long!'

'I can't walk all that way,' said Michael. 'I've eaten much too much.'

The Long Walk stretched across the Park from the Lane to the Far Gate, linking the little countrified road to the busy streets they had travelled that morning. It was wide and straight and uncompromising — not like the narrow, curly paths that led to the Lake and the Playground. Trees and fountains bordered it, but it always seemed to Jane and Michael at least ten miles in length.

'The Long Walk — or the short walk home! Take your choice!' Mary Poppins warned them.

Michael was just about to say he would go home, when Jane ran on ahead.

'I'll race you,' she cried, 'to the first tree!'

Michael could never bear to be beaten. 'That's not fair! You had a good start!' And off he dashed at her heels.

'Don't expect me to keep up with you! I am not a centipede!'

Mary Poppins sauntered along, enjoying the balmy air, and assuring herself that the balmy air was enjoying Mary Poppins. How could it do otherwise, she thought, when under her arm was the parrot-umbrella and over her wrist a new black handbag?

The perambulator creaked and groaned. In it, the Twins and Annabel, packed as close as birds in a nest, were playing with the blue duck.

'That's cheating, Michael!' grumbled Jane. For accidentally on purpose, he had pushed her aside and was running past.

From tree to tree they raced along, first one ahead and then the other, each of them trying to win. The Long Walk streamed away behind them and Mary Poppins and the perambulator were only specks in the distance.

'Next time you push me I'll give you a punch!' said Michael, red in the face.

'If you bump into me again I'll pull your hair, Michael!'

'Now, now!' the Park Keeper warned them sternly. 'Observe the rules! No argle-bargling!'

He was meant to be sweeping up the twigs but, instead, he was chatting with the Policeman, who was leaning against a maple-tree, whiling away his time.

Jane and Michael stopped in their tracks. Their race, they were both surprised to find, had brought them right across the Park and near to the Far Gate.

The Park Keeper looked at them severely. 'Always argufying!' he said. 'I never did that when I was a boy. But then I was a Nonly child, just me and me poor old mother. I never 'ad nobody to play with. You two don't know when you're lucky!'

'Well, I dunno!' the Policeman said. 'Depends on how you look at it. I had someone to play with, you might say, but it never did me any good!'

'Brothers or sisters?' Jane enquired, all her crossness vanishing. She liked the Policeman very much. And today he seemed to remind her of someone, but she couldn't think who it was.

'Brothers!' the Policeman informed her, without enthusiasm.

'Older or younger?' Michael asked. Where, he wondered to himself, had he seen another face like that?

'Same age,' replied the Policeman flatly.

'Then you must have been twins, like John and Barbara!'

'I was triplets,' the Policeman said.

'How lovely!' cried Jane, with a sigh of envy.

'Well, it wasn't so lovely, not to my mind. The opposite, I'd say. 'Egbert,' my mother was always asking, 'why don't you play with Herbert and Albert?' But it wasn't me — it was them that wouldn't. All they wanted was to go to the Zoo, and when they came back they'd be animals — tigers tearing about the house and letting on it was Timbuctoo or around the Gobi Desert. I never wanted to be a tiger. I liked playing bus-conductors and keeping things neat and tidy.'

'Like er!' The Park Keeper waved to a distant fountain where Mary Poppins was leaning over to admire the set of her hat.

'Like her,' agreed the Policeman, nodding. 'Or,' he said, grinning, 'that nice Miss Ellen.'

'Ellen's not neat,' protested Michael. 'Her hair straggles and her feet are too big.'

'And when they grew up,' demanded Jane, 'what did Herbert and Albert do?' She liked to hear the end of a story.

'Do?' said the Policeman, very surprised. 'What one triplet does, the others do. They joined the police, of course!'

'But I thought you were all so different!'

'We were and we are!' the Policeman argued. 'Seeing as how I stayed in London and they went off to distant lands. Wanted to be near the jungle, they said, and mix with giraffes and leopards. One of 'em — Herbert — he never came back. Just sent a note saying not to worry. 'I'm happy,' he said, 'and I feel at home!' And after that, never a word — not even a card at Christmas.'

'And what about Albert?' the children prompted.

'Ah — Albert — yes! He did come back. After he met with his accident.'

'What accident?' they wanted to know. They were burning with curiosity.

'Lorst his foot,' the Policeman answered. 'Wouldn't say how, or why or where. Just got himself a wooden one and never smiled again. Now he works on the traffic signals. Sits in his box and pines away. And sometimes—' The Policeman lowered his voice. 'Sometimes he forgets the lights. Leaves them at red for a whole day till London's at a standstill!'

Michael gave an excited skip. 'He must be the one we passed this morning, in the box by the Far Gate!'

'That's him all right!' The Policeman nodded.

'But what is he pining for?' asked Jane. She wanted every detail.

'For the jungle, he keeps on telling me. He says he's got a friend there!'

'A funny place to 'ave a friend!' The Park Keeper glanced around the Park to see that all was in order.

'T'chah!' he exclaimed disgustedly. 'That's Wil-lerby up to 'is tricks again! Look at 'im sittin' up there on the wall! Come down out of that! Remember the bye-laws! No dogs allowed on the Park Wall. I shall 'ave to speak to