“Will you be quiet!” demanded Mary Poppins, making a dive at him with her apron.
“I will not!” he shouted, dodging neatly. “This is no time for silence. I’m going to spread the news.”
He swooped out of the window.
“Back in five minutes!” he screamed at her over his shoulder, as he darted away.
Mary Poppins moved quietly about the Nursery, putting Annabel’s new clothes in a neat pile.
The Sunlight, slipping in at the window, crept across the room and up to the cradle.
“Open your eyes,” it said softly, “and I’ll put a shine on them!”
The coverlet of the cradle trembled. Annabel opened her eyes.
“Good girl!” said the Sunlight. “They’re blue, I see. My favourite colour! There! You won’t find a brighter pair of eyes anywhere!” It slipped lightly out of Annabel’s eyes and down the side of the cradle.
“Thank you very much!” said Annabel politely.
A warm Breeze stirred the muslin flounces at her head.
“Curls or straight?” it whispered, dropping into the cradle beside her.
“Oh, curls, please!” said Annabel softly.
“It does save trouble, doesn’t it?” agreed the Breeze. And it moved over her head, carefully turning up the feathery edges of her hair, before it fluttered off across the room.
“Here we are! Here we are!”
A harsh voice shrilled from the window. The Starling had returned to the sill. And behind him, wobbling uncertainly as he alighted, came a very young bird.
Mary Poppins moved towards them threateningly.
“Now you be off!” she said angrily. “I’ll have no sparrers littering up this Nursery—”
But the Starling, with the young one at his side, brushed haughtily past her.
“Kindly remember, Mary Poppins,” he said icily, “that all my families are properly brought up. Littering, indeed!”
He alighted neatly on the edge of the cradle and steadied the Fledgling beside him.
The young bird stared about him with round, inquisitive eyes. The Starling hopped along to the pillow.
“Annabel, dear,” he began, in a husky, wheedling voice, “I’m very partial to a nice, crisp, crunchy piece of Arrowroot Biscuit.” His eyes twinkled greedily. “You haven’t one about you, I suppose?”
The curled head stirred on the pillow.
“No? Well, you’re young yet for biscuits, perhaps. Your sister Barbara – nice girl, she was, very generous and pleasant – always remembered me. So if, in the future, you could spare the old fellow a crumb or two. . .”
“Of course I will,” said Annabel, from the folds of the blanket.
“That’s the girl!” croaked the Starling approvingly. He cocked his head on one side and gazed at her with his round, bright eye. “I hope,” he remarked politely, “you are not too tired after your journey.”
Annabel shook her head.
“Where has she come from – out of an egg?” cheeped the Fledgling suddenly.
“Huh-huh!” scoffed Mary Poppins. “Do you think she’s a sparrer?”
The Starling gave her a pained and haughty look.
“Well, what is she, then? And where did she come from?” cried the Fledgling shrilly, flapping his short wings and staring down at the cradle.
“You tell him, Annabel!” the Starling croaked.
Annabel moved her hands inside the blanket.
“I am earth and air and fire and water,” she said softly. “I come from the Dark where all things have their beginning.”
“Ah, such dark!” said the Starling softly, bending his head to his breast.
“It was dark in the egg too!” the Fledgling cheeped.
“I come from the sea and its tides,” Annabel went on. “I come from the sky and its stars; I come from the sun and its brightness—”
“Ah, so bright!” said the Starling, nodding.
“And I come from the forests of earth.”
As if in a dream, Mary Poppins rocked the cradle – to-and-fro, to-and-fro with a steady swinging movement.
“Yes?” whispered the Fledgling.
“Slowly I moved at first,” said Annabel, “always sleeping and dreaming. I remembered all I had been, and I thought of all I shall be. And when I had dreamed my dream, I awoke and came swiftly.”
She paused for a moment, her blue eyes full of memories.
“And then?” prompted the Fledgling.
“I heard the stars singing as I came and I felt warm wings about me. I passed the beasts of the jungle and came through the dark, deep waters. It was a long journey.”
Annabel was silent.
The Fledgling stared at her with his bright inquisitive eyes.
Mary Poppins’ hand lay quietly on the side of the cradle. She had stopped rocking.
“A long journey, indeed!” said the Starling softly, lifting his head from his breast. “And, ah, so soon forgotten!”
Annabel stirred under the quilt.
“No!” she said confidently. “I’ll never forget.”
“Stuff and Nonsense! Beaks and Claws! Of course you will. By the time the week’s out you won’t remember a word of it – what you are or where you came from!”
Inside her flannel petticoat Annabel was kicking furiously.
“I will! I will! How could I forget?”
“Because they all do!” jeered the Starling harshly. “Every silly human, except–” he nodded his head at Mary Poppins – “her! She’s different, she’s the Oddity, she’s the Misfit—”
“You Sparrer!” cried Mary Poppins, making a dart at him.
But with a rude laugh he swept his Fledgling off the edge of the cradle and flew with him to the window-sill.
“Tipped you last!” he said cheekily, as he brushed past Mary Poppins. “Hullo, what’s that?”
There was a chorus of voices outside on the landing and a clatter of feet on the stairs.
“I don’t believe you! I won’t believe you!” cried Annabel wildly.
And at that moment Jane and Michael and the Twins burst into the room.
“Mrs Brill says you’ve got something to show us!” said Jane, flinging off her hat.
“What is it?” demanded Michael, gazing round the room.
“Show me! Me too!” shrieked the Twins.
Mary Poppins glared at them. “Is this a decent Nursery or the Zoological Gardens?” she enquired angrily. “Answer me that!”
“The Zoo – er – I mean—” Michael broke off hurriedly, for he had caught Mary Poppins’ eye. “I mean a Nursery,” he said lamely.
“Oh, look, Michael, look!” Jane cried excitedly. “I told you something important was happening! It’s a New Baby! Oh, Mary Poppins, can I have it to keep?”
Mary Poppins, with a furious glance at them all, stooped and lifted Annabel out of the cradle and sat down with her in the armchair.
“Gently, please, gently!” she warned, as they crowded about her. “This is a baby, not a battleship!”
“A boy-baby?” asked Michael.
“No, a girl – Annabel.”
Michael and Annabel stared at each other. He put his finger into her hand and she clutched it tightly.
“My doll!” said John, pushing up against Mary Poppins’ knee.
“My rabbit!” said Barbara, tugging at Annabel’s shawl.
“Oh!” breathed Jane, touching the hair that the wind had curled. “How very small and sweet! Like a star. Where did you come from, Annabel?”
Very pleased to be asked, Annabel began her story again.
“I came from the Dark. . .” she recited softly.
Jane laughed. “Such funny little sounds!” she cried. “I wish she could talk and tell us.”
Annabel stared.
“But I am telling you!” she protested, kicking.
“Ha-ha!” shrieked the Starling rudely from the window. “What did I say? Excuse me laughing!”
The Fledgling giggled behind his wing.
“Perhaps she came from a Toy Shop,” said Michael.
Annabel, with a furious movement, flung his finger from her.
“Don’t be silly!” said Jane. “Doctor Simpson must have brought her in his little brown bag!”
“Was I right, or was I wrong?” The Starling’s old dark eyes gleamed tauntingly at Annabel.
“Tell me that!” he jeered, flapping his wings in triumph.
But for answer Annabel turned her face against Mary Poppins’ apron and wept. Her first cries, thin and lonely, rang piercingly through the house.
“There! There!” said the Starling gruffly. “Don’t take on! It can’t be helped. You’re only a human child after all. But next time, perhaps, you’ll believe your Betters! Elders and Betters! Elders and Betters!” he screamed, prancing conceitedly up and down.
“Michael, take my feather duster, please, and sweep those birds off the sill!” said Mary Poppins ominously.
A squawk of amusement came from the Starling.
“We can sweep ourselves off, Mary Poppins, thank you! We were just going, anyway! Come along, Boy!”
And with a loud, clucking chuckle, he flicked the Fledgling over the sill and swooped with him through the window. . .
In a very short time, Annabel settled down comfortably to life in Cherry Tree Lane. She enjoyed being the centre of attraction, and was always pleased when somebody leant over her cradle and said how pretty she was, or how good or sweet-tempered.
“Do go on admiring me!” she would say, smiling. “I like it so much!”
And then they would hasten to tell her how curly her hair was and how blue her eyes, and Annabel would smile in such a satisfied way that they would cry, “How intelligent she is! You would almost think she understood!”
But that always annoyed her, and she would turn away in disgust at their foolishness. Which was silly, because when she was disgusted she looked so charming that they became more foolish than ever.
She was a week old before the Starling returned. Mary Poppins, in the dim light of the nightlight, was gently rocking the cradle when he appeared.
“Back again?” snapped Mary Poppins, watching him prance in. “You’re as bad as a bad penny!” She gave a long, disgusted sniff.
“I’ve been busy!” said the Starling. “Have to keep my affairs in order. And this isn’t the only Nursery I have to look after, you know!” His beady, black eyes twinkled wickedly.
“Humph!” she said shortly. “I’m sorry for the others!”
He chuckled, and shook his head.
“Nobody like her!” he remarked chirpily to the blind-tassel. “Nobody like her! She’s got an answer for everything!” He cocked his head towards the cradle. “Well, how are things? Annabel asleep?”
“No thanks to you, if she is!” said Mary Poppins.
The Starling ignored the remark. He hopped to the end of the sill.
“I’ll keep watch,” he said, in a whisper. “You go down and get a cup of tea.”
Mary Poppins stood up.
“Mind and don’t wake her, then!”
The Starling laughed pityingly.
“My dear girl, I have in my time brought up at least twenty broods of fledglings. I don’t need to be told how to look after a mere baby.”
“Humph!” Mary Poppins walked to the cupboard and very pointedly put the biscuit-tin under her arm before she went out and shut the door.
The Starling marched up and down the window-sill, backwards and forwards, with his wing-tips under his tail-feathers.
There was a small stir in the cradle. Annabel opened her eyes.
“Hullo!” she said. “I was wanting to see you.”
“Ha!” said the Starling, swooping across to her.
“There’s something I wanted to remember,” said Annabel, frowning. “And I thought you might remind me.”
He started. His dark eye glittered.
“How does it go?” he said softly. “Like this?”
And he began in a husky whisper: “I am earth and air and fire and water—”
“No, no!” said Annabel impatiently. “Of course it doesn’t.”
“Well,” said the Starling anxiously, “was it about your journey? You came from the sea and its tides, you came from the sky and—”
“Oh, don’t be so silly!” cried Annabel. “The only journey I ever took was to the Park and back again this morning. No, no – it was something important. Something beginning with B.”
She crowed suddenly.
“I’ve got it!” she cried. “It’s Biscuit. Half an Arrowroot Biscuit on the mantelpiece. Michael left it there after tea!”
“Is that all?” said the Starling sadly.
“Yes, of course,” Annabel said fretfully. “Isn’t it enough? I thought you’d be glad of a nice piece of biscuit!”
“So I am, so I am!” said the Starling hastily. “But. . .”
She turned her head on the pillow and closed her eyes.
“Don’t talk any more now, please!” she said. “I want to go to sleep.”
The Starling glanced across at the mantelpiece, and down again at Annabel.
“Biscuits!” he said, shaking his head. “Alas, Annabel, alas!”
Mary Poppins came in quietly and closed the door.
“Did she wake?” she said, in a whisper.
The Starling nodded.
“Only for a minute,” he said sadly. “But it was long enough.”
Mary Poppins’ eyes questioned him.
“She’s forgotten,” he said, with a catch in his croak. “She’s forgotten it all. I knew she would. But, ah, my dear, what a pity!”
“Humph!”
Mary Poppins moved quietly about the Nursery, putting the toys away. She glanced at the Starling. He was standing at the window-sill with his back to her, and his speckled shoulders were heaving.
“Caught another cold?” she remarked sarcastically.
He wheeled round.
“Certainly not! It’s – ahem – the night air. Rather chilly, you know. Makes the eyes water. Well – I must be off!”
He waddled unsteadily to the edge of the sill. “I’m getting old,” he croaked sadly. “That’s what it is. Not so young as we were. Eh, Mary Poppins?”
“I don’t know about you–” Mary Poppins drew herself up haughtily – “but I’m quite as young as I was, thank you!”
“Ah,” said the Starling, shaking his head, “you’re a wonder. An Absolute, Marvellous, Wonderful Wonder!” His round eye twinkled wickedly.
“I don’t think!” he called back rudely, as he dived out of the window.
“Impudent Sparrer!” she shouted after him, and shut the window with a bang. . .
Chapter Six
ROBERTSON AY’S STORY
“STEP ALONG, PLEASE!” said Mary Poppins, pushing the perambulator, with the Twins at one end of it and Annabel at the other, towards her favourite seat in the Park.
It was a green one, quite near the Lake, and she chose it because she could bend sideways, every now and again, and see her own reflection in the water. The sight of her face, gleaming between two water-lilies always gave her a pleasant feeling of satisfaction and contentment.
Michael trudged behind.
“We’re always stepping along,” he grumbled to Jane in a whisper, taking care that Mary Poppins did not hear him, “but we never seem to get anywhere.”
Mary Poppins turned round and glared at him.
“Put your hat on straight!”
Michael tilted his hat over his eyes. It had H.M.S. Trumpeter printed on the band, and he thought it suited him very well.
But Mary Poppins was looking with contempt at them both.
“Humph!” she said. “You two look a picture, I must say! Stravaiging along like a couple of tortoises and no polish on your shoes.”
“Well, it’s Robertson Ay’s Half-day,” said Jane. “I suppose he didn’t have time to do them before he went out.”
“Tch, tch! Lazy, id
le, Good-for-Nothing – that’s what he is. Always was and always will be!” Mary Poppins said savagely, pushing the perambulator up against her own green seat.
She lifted out the Twins, and tucked the shawl tightly around Annabel. She glanced at her sunlit reflection in the Lake and smiled in a superior way, straightening the new bow of ribbon at her neck. Then she took her bag of knitting from the perambulator.
“How do you know he’s always been idle?” asked Jane. “Did you know Robertson Ay before you came here?”
“Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies!” said Mary Poppins priggishly, as she began to cast on stitches for a woollen vest for John.
“She never tells us anything!” Michael grumbled.
“I know!” sighed Jane.
But very soon they forgot about Robertson Ay and began to play Mr-and-Mrs-Banks-and-Their-Two-Children. Then they became Red Indians with John and Barbara for squaws. And after that they changed into Tight-Rope-Walkers with the back of the green seat for a rope.
“Mind my hat – if ‘you please!” said Mary Poppins. It was a brown one with a pigeon’s feather stuck into the ribbon.
Michael went carefully, foot over foot, along the back of the seat. When he got to the end he took off his hat and waved it.
“Jane,” he cried, “I’m the King of the Castle and you’re the—”
“Stop, Michael!” she interrupted, and pointed across the Lake. “Look over there!”
Along the path at the edge of the Lake came a tall, slim figure, curiously dressed. He wore stockings of red striped with yellow, a red-and-yellow tunic scalloped at the edges, and on his head was a large-brimmed red-and-yellow hat with a high, peaked crown.
Jane and Michael watched with interest as he came towards them, moving with a lazy, swaggering step, his hands in his pockets and his hat pulled down over his eyes.
He was whistling loudly, and as he drew nearer they saw that the peaks of his tunic and the brim of his hat were edged with little bells that jingled musically as he moved. He was the strangest person they had ever seen, and yet – there was something about him that seemed familiar.
“I think I’ve seen him before,” said Jane, frowning and trying to remember.