Mary Poppins

While buying sausages, Jane and Michael witness Mary Poppins’s reaction to the butcher’s compliments, a reaction that causes the butcher to wish for “a trap door in the floor of his shop that would open and swallow him up” (87). Next, they go to the fishmonger, who offends Mary Poppins by saying “You don’t look too blooming” (89). When Michael unwisely expresses his readiness to go home, Mary Poppins sends him on his way so that she and Jane and the twins can go buy gingerbread without him. Jane persuades Mary Poppins to allow Michael to come with them, but instead of going to the usual place, they go to “the most curious shop they had ever seen” (91).

Inside the shop is a counter full of gingerbread, “each slab so studded with gilt stars that the shop itself seemed to be faintly lit by them” (91). Mary Poppins calls out two names, Fannie and Annie, summoning two enormously tall women who are sisters and who have “a very odd way of expressing themselves” (92). Another woman calls out from the back of the shop, and the sound of her voice makes the two large women look sad. When a tiny woman appears, she seems to Jane and Michael to be “older than anything in the world” (93). The woman, Mrs. Corry, immediately recognizes the Banks children and Mary Poppins, and she greets them happily before breaking off two of her own fingers and giving one each to John and Barbara as the fingers immediately grow back on her hand. When Mrs. Corry makes a comment about overhearing William the Conqueror say something to his mother, the children realize she is indeed very old. Mrs. Corry asks if Fannie and Annie have given Mary Poppins any gingerbread, and when they explain that they were about to do that, Mrs. Corry speaks cruelly to them, calling Annie “Cowardy-custard! Cry-baby!” (95) and shaming her to tears.

Mrs. Corry speaks kindly to Jane and Michael, offering them gingerbread, and they “chose thirteen slabs of gingerbread, each with its gilt paper star” (96). Jane and Michael pay Mrs. Corry by sticking threepenny-bits on her coat, and they leave the shop as Mrs. Corry asks what they will do with the stars. Jane and Michael explain where they keep the stars, and Mrs. Corry listens carefully, “as though she were committing the words to memory” (98). She exchanges a meaningful look with Mary Poppins, before saying goodbye to her and the children. When Jane and Michael look back at the shop, it has mysteriously disappeared.

That night, as Jane and Michael settle in their beds to go to sleep, they hear noises on the stairs. As they pretend to be asleep, they see Mary Poppins wearing her coat and moving around the room. After Mary Poppins leaves the nursery, they hear voices in the garden, and when they look out the window, they see Mrs. Corry and her two enormous daughters, Fannie and Annie, equipped with ladders, a pail of glue, and a large paintbrush. Mary Poppins appears with a basket “that seemed to give out a faint, mysterious light” (101), and the group of four women walk quickly down the lane and up the hill. While Jane and Michael watch, Fannie and Annie hold up the ladders for Mrs. Corry and Mary Poppins, and the two women work together, “sticking the Gingerbread Stars to the sky” (102). Michael realizes that Mary Poppins had taken the paper stars that he and Jane had saved, and the women paste those stars into the sky. The children marvel at what they have seen.

One afternoon, Jane and Michael go to a party while Mary Poppins watches over the twins in the nursery. John complains to the sunshine, asking it to move so it doesn’t blind him, and the sunshine responds apologetically. Barbara also speaks to the sunshine, and a starling appears at the window, commenting on the talkative nature of the twin babies. The starling asks Barbara for some of her biscuit, and she shares with him happily.

Barbara and John chat amongst themselves about the tricks they perform for the adults in the house, and John criticizes “the idiotic way they have of talking” (108). Barbara agrees with her twin, grumbling about Jane and Michael’s inability to understand the wind and the starling. Mary Poppins explains that Jane and Michael once were able to communicate with the wind and the starling, but once they turned one year old, they lost that ability. The twins can’t believe that they too will forget once they get older and begin to cry. Mrs. Banks hears them and comes in, asking Mary Poppins why they are upset, and Mary Poppins explains that they must be teething; John gets even more upset, explaining that he doesn’t want teeth if they make him forget the things he likes best. Eventually, John, who has good manners, stops crying, and does one of his tricks in order to please his mother. The starling laughs at Mrs. Banks’s ignorance, and the babies exclaim that they will not forget what they know like their siblings.

Time passes, and both John and Barbara get their teeth. Soon after their first birthday, the starling comes to the nursery to visit the babies and finds that they are no longer able to speak to him as they once did. He mourns for the change and flies away after Mary Poppins scorns him for shedding a tear.