“He isn’t a ninkypoop after all, you see,” said Jane, as they went upstairs to the nursery and Tea.
“No,” agreed Michael. “But how do you think Mary Poppins knew?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “And she’ll never, never tell us. I am sure of that …”
JANE, WITH HER head tied up in Mary Poppins’ bandanna handkerchief, was in bed with earache.
“What does it feel like?” Michael wanted to know.
“Like guns going off inside my head,” said Jane.
“Cannons?”
“No, pop-guns.”
“Oh,” said Michael. And he almost wished he could have earache, too. It sounded so exciting.
“Shall I tell you a story out of one of the books?” said Michael, going to the bookshelf.
“No. I just couldn’t bear it,” said Jane, holding her ear with her hand.
“Well, shall I sit at the window and tell you what is happening outside?”
“Yes, do,” said Jane.
So Michael sat all the afternoon on the window seat telling her everything that occurred in the Lane. And sometimes his accounts were very dull and sometimes very exciting.
“There’s Admiral Boom!” he said once. “He has come out of his gate and is hurrying down the Lane. Here he comes. His nose is redder than ever and he’s wearing a top hat. Now he is passing Next Door—”
“Is he saying ‘Blast my gizzard!’?” enquired Jane.
“I can’t hear. I expect so. There’s Miss Lark’s second housemaid in Miss Lark’s garden. And Robertson Ay is in our garden, sweeping up the leaves and looking at her over the fence. He is sitting down now, having a rest.”
“He has a weak heart,” said Jane.
“How do you know?”
“He told me. He said his doctor said he was to do as little as possible. And I heard Daddy say if Robertson Ay does what his doctor told him to he’ll sack him. Oh, how it bangs and bangs!” said Jane, clutching her ear again.
“Hulloh!” said Michael excitedly from the window.
“What is it?” cried Jane, sitting up. “Do tell me.”
“A very extraordinary thing. There’s a cow down in the Lane,” said Michael, jumping up and down on the window seat.
“A cow? A real cow – right in the middle of a town? How funny! Mary Poppins,” said Jane, “there’s a cow in the Lane, Michael says.”
“Yes, and it’s walking very slowly, putting its head over every gate and looking round as though it had lost something.”
“I wish I could see it,” said Jane mournfully.
“Look!” said Michael, pointing downwards as Mary Poppins came to the window. “A cow. Isn’t that funny?”
Mary Poppins gave a quick, sharp glance down into the Lane. She started with surprise.
“Certainly not,” she said, turning to Jane and Michael. “It’s not funny at all. I know that cow. She was a great friend of my Mother’s and I’ll thank you to speak politely to her.” She smoothed her apron and looked at them both very severely.
“Have you known her long?” enquired Michael gently, hoping that if he was particularly polite he would hear something more about the cow.
“Since before she saw the King,” said Mary Poppins.
“And when was that?” asked Jane, in a soft encouraging voice.
Mary Poppins stared into space, her eyes fixed upon something that they could not see. Jane and Michael held their breath, waiting.
“It was long ago,” said Mary Poppins, in a brooding story-telling voice. She paused, as though she were remembering events that happened hundreds of years before that time. Then she went on dreamily, still gazing into the middle of the room, but without seeing anything.
The Red Cow – that’s the name she went by. And very important and prosperous she was, too (so my Mother said). She lived in the best field in the whole district – a large one full of buttercups the size of saucers and dandelions standing up in it like soldiers. Every time she ate the head off one soldier, another grew up in its place, with a green military coat and a yellow busby.
She had lived there always – she often told my Mother that she couldn’t remember the time when she hadn’t lived in that field. Her world was bounded by green hedges and the sky and she knew nothing of what lay beyond these.
The Red Cow was very respectable, she always behaved like a perfect lady and she knew What was What. To her a thing was either black or white – there was nothing in between. Dandelions were either sweet or sour – there were never any moderately nice ones.
She led a very busy life. Her mornings were taken up in giving lessons to the Red Calf, her daughter, and in the afternoon she taught the little one deportment and mooing and all the things a really well brought up calf should know. Then they had their supper, and the Red Cow showed the Red Calf how to select a good blade of grass from a bad one; and when her child had gone to sleep at night she would go into a corner of the field and chew the cud and think her own quiet thoughts.
All her days were exactly the same. One Red Calf grew up and went away and another came in its place. And it was natural that the Red Cow should imagine that her life would always be the same as it had always been – indeed, she felt that she could ask for nothing better than for all her days to be alike till she came to the end of them.
But at the very moment she was thinking these thoughts, adventure, as she afterwards told my Mother, was stalking her. It came upon her one night when the stars themselves looked like dandelions in the sky and the moon a great daisy among the stars.
On this night, long after the Red Calf was asleep, the Red Cow stood up suddenly and began to dance. She danced wildly and beautifully and in perfect time, though she had no music to go by. Sometimes it was a polka, sometimes a Highland Fling and sometimes a special dance that she made up out of her own head. And in between these dances she would curtsey and make sweeping bows and knock her head against the dandelions.
“Dear me!” said the Red Cow to herself, as she began on a Sailor’s Hornpipe. “What an extraordinary thing! I always thought dancing improper, but it can’t be since I myself am dancing. For I am a model cow.”
And she went on dancing, and thoroughly enjoying herself. At last, however, she grew tired and decided that she had danced enough and that she would go to sleep. But, to her great surprise, she found that she could not stop dancing. When she went to lie down beside the Red Calf, her legs would not let her. They went on capering and prancing and, of course, carrying her with them. Round and round the field she went, leaping and waltzing and stepping on tiptoe.
“Dear me!” she murmured at intervals with a ladylike accent. “How very peculiar!” But she couldn’t stop.