Free Mary Poppins Comes Back by P. L. Travers

"I wouldn't be certain. He may be or he may not. It's all a matter of how you look at it."
    Mary Poppins stepped through the door and peered about her.
    "That's his hat, isn't it?" she demanded, pointing to an old felt hat that hung on a peg in the hall.
    "Well, it is, of course—in a manner of speaking." The round woman admitted the fact unwillingly.
    "Then he's in," said Mary Poppins. "No member of
my
family ever goes out without a hat. They're much too respectable."
    "Well, all I can tell you is what he said to me this morning," said the round woman. 'Miss Tartlet,' he said, 'I may be in this afternoon and I may not. It is quite impossible to tell.' That's what he said. But you'd better go up and see for yourself. I'm not a mountaineer."
    The round woman glanced down at her round body and shook her head. Jane and Michael could easily understand that a person of her size and shape would not want to climb up and down Mr. Turvy's narrow rickety stairs very often.
    Mary Poppins sniffed.
    "Follow me, please!" she snapped the words at Jane and Michael, and they ran after her up the creaking stairs.
    Miss Tartlet stood in the hall watching them with a superior smile on her face.
    At the top landing Mary Poppins knocked on the door with the head of her umbrella. There was no reply. She knocked again—louder this time. Still there was no answer.
    "Cousin Arthur!" she called through the key-hole. "Cousin Arthur, are you in?"
    "No, I'm out!" came a far-away voice from within.
    "How can he be out? I can hear him!" whispered Michael to Jane.
    "Cousin Arthur!" Mary Poppins rattled the door-handle. "I know you're in."
    "No, no, I'm not," came the far-away voice. "I'm out, I tell you. It's the Second Monday!"
    "Oh, dear—I'd forgotten!" said Mary Poppins, and with an angry movement she turned the handle and flung open the door.
    At first all that Jane and Michael could see was a large room that appeared to be quite empty except for a carpenter's bench at one end. Piled upon this was a curious collection of articles—china dogs with no noses, wooden horses that had lost their tails, chipped plates, broken dolls, knives without handles, stools with only two legs—everything in the world, it seemed, that could possibly want mending.
    Round the walls of the room were shelves reaching from floor to ceiling and these, too, were crowded with cracked china, broken glass and shattered toys.
    But there was no sign anywhere of a human being.
    "Oh," said Jane in a disappointed voice. "He
is
out, after all!"
    But Mary Poppins had darted across the room to the window.
    "Come in at once, Arthur! Out in the rain like that, and you with bronchitis the winter before last!"
    And to their amazement Jane and Michael saw her grasp a long leg that hung across the window-sill and pull in from the outer air a tall, thin, sad-looking man with a long drooping moustache.
    "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Mary Poppins crossly, keeping a firm hold of Mr. Turvy with one hand while she shut the window with the other. "We've brought you some important work to do and here you are behaving like this."
    "Well, I can't help it," said Mr. Turvy apologetically, mopping his sad eyes with a large handkerchief. "I told you it was the Second Monday."
    "What does that mean?" asked Michael, staring at Mr. Turvy with interest.
    "Ah," said Mr. Turvy turning to him and shaking him limply by the hand. "It's kind of you to enquire. Very kind. I do appreciate it, really." He paused to wipe his eyes again. "You see," he went on, "it's this way. On the Second Monday of the month everything goes wrong with me."
    "What kind of things?" asked Jane, feeling very sorry for Mr. Turvy but also very curious.
    "Well, take to-day!" said Mr. Turvy. "This happens to be the Second Monday of the month. And because I want to be in—having so much work to do—I'm automatically out. And if I wanted to be out, sure enough, I'd be in."
    "I see," said Jane, though she really found it very