Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins, #1)

by P.L. Travers

Michael knew now what was happening to him. He knew he was going to be naughty.

“In a Nurry?” he said to Mary Poppins. “Well, that’s a pity. I’d hoped you’d dropped in for a bit of a chat. We Butchers, you know, like a bit of company. And we don’t often get the chance of talking to a nice, handsome young lady like you—” He broke off suddenly, for he had caught sight of Mary Poppins’s face. The expression on it was awful. And the Butcher found himself wishing there was a trap door in the floor of his shop that would open and swallow him up.

Robertson Ay was sitting in the garden busily doing nothing.

“I wish we were invisible,” said Michael, when Mary Poppins had told him that the very sight of him was more than any self-respecting person could be expected to stand.

“My goodness,” she said, smoothing the fur on her right-hand glove. “I wouldn’t half like a cup of tea!” “Would you quarter like it, though?” asked Michael. “There is no call for you to be funny,” said Mary Poppins, in such a voice that Michael felt that, indeed, there wasn’t.