Mary Poppins Read Online Free PDF Page B

true or isn't it? About Mr. Wigg. Is Mary Poppins right or are we?"
    But there was nobody to give them the right answer.
    The Bus roared on, wildly lurching and bounding.
    Mary Poppins sat between them, offended and silent, and presently, because they were very tired, they crept closer to her and leant up against her sides and fell asleep, still wondering….

CHAPTER 4
    MISS LARK'S ANDREW
    MISS LARK LIVED Next Door.
    But before we go any further I must tell you what Next Door looked like. It was a very grand house, by far the grandest in Cherry-Tree Lane. Even Admiral Boom had been known to envy Miss Lark her wonderful house, though his own had ship's funnels instead of chimneys and a flagstaff in the front garden. Over and over again the inhabitants of the Lane heard him say, as he rolled past Miss Lark's mansion: "Blast my gizzard! What does
she
want with a house like that?"
    And the reason of Admiral Boom's jealousy was that Miss Lark had two gates. One was for Miss Lark's friends and relations, and the other for the Butcher and the Baker and the Milkman.
    Once the Baker made a mistake and came in through the gate reserved for the friends and relations, and Miss Lark was so angry that she said she wouldn't have any more bread ever.
    But in the end she had to forgive the Baker because he was the only one in the neighbourhood who made those little flat rolls with the curly twists of crust on the top. She never really liked him very much after that, however, and when he came he pulled his hat far down over his eyes so that Miss Lark might think he was somebody else. But she never did.
    Jane and Michael always knew when Miss Lark was in the garden or coming along the Lane, because she wore so many brooches and necklaces and earrings that she jingled and jangled just like a brass band. And, whenever she met them, she always said the same thing:
    "Good-morning!" (or "Good-afternoon!" if it happened to be after luncheon), "and how are
we
today?"
    And Jane and Michael were never quite sure whether Miss Lark was asking how
they
were, or how she and Andrew were.
    So they just replied: "Good-afternoon!" (or, of course, "Good-morning!" if it was before luncheon).
    All day long, no matter where the children were, they could hear Miss Lark calling, in a very loud voice, things like:
    "Andrew, where are you?" or
    "Andrew, you mustn't go out without your overcoat!" or
    "Andrew, come to Mother!"
    And, if you didn't know, you would think that Andrew must be a little boy. Indeed, Jane thought that Miss Lark thought that Andrew
was
a little boy. But Andrew wasn't. He was a dog — one of those small, silky, fluffy dogs that look like a fur necklet, until they begin to bark. But, of course, when they do that you
know
that they're dogs. No fur necklet ever made a noise like that.
    Now, Andrew led such a luxurious life that you might have thought he was the Shah of Persia in disguise. He slept on a silk pillow in Miss Lark's room; he went by car to the Hairdresser's twice a week to be shampooed; he had cream for every meal and sometimes oysters, and he possessed four overcoats with checks and stripes in different colours. Andrew's ordinary days were filled with the kind of things most people have only on birthdays. And when Andrew himself had a birthday he had
two
candles on his cake for every year, instead of only one.

    The effect of all this was to make Andrew very much disliked in the neighbourhood. People used to laugh heartily when they saw Andrew sitting up in the back seat of Miss Lark's car on the way to the Hairdresser's, with the fur rug over his knees and his best coat on. And on the day when Miss Lark bought him two pairs of small leather boots so that he could go out in the Park wet or fine, everybody in the Lane came down to their front gates to watch him go by and to smile secretly behind their hands.
    "Pooh!" said Michael, as they were watching Andrew one day through the fence that separated Number Seventeen from Next Door.