“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.
