Mary Poppins

Jane is in bed with an earache, so Michael spends the afternoon telling her what is happening outside the nursery window to keep her entertained. Suddenly, Michael announces that there is a cow on the lane. Mary Poppins is just as surprised as the children to see the cow, who apparently was a great friend of Mary’s mother. Jane and Michael ask Mary Poppins gentle questions about the cow, trying their best to be polite. Mary Poppins tells them a story about her mother and the cow, “as though she were remembering events that happened hundreds of years before that time” (51).

According to Mary Poppins, the respectable Red Cow lived in the best field in the district. The Red Cow had a daughter called the Red Calf, and when she grew up, another calf came along. The Red Cow was happy with her life, and just as she was thinking that she would be so pleased if her life was always like this, ‘adventure […] was stalking her” (53). One night, unexpectedly, the Red Cow stood up and began to dance, a behavior she previously thought was improper. Even when the Red Cow became tired, she could not stop dancing, so she decided that she must go see the king to talk to him about her problem.

When the Red Cow eventually arrives to the king’s palace, her dancing annoys him, and he commands her to stop. Though she tries, she cannot. She explains to the king that she has been dancing for seven days and she needs his advice as to what to do about it. The Red Cow explains that she feels as if “laughter were running up and down” inside her (56), and the king suddenly notices that there is a fallen star on her horn. He blames his courtiers for not noticing the star sooner, and they attempt to remove it. They are unsuccessful, however, so the king asks his secretary to research the situation in the encyclopedia. The secretary reports back and mentions a cow jumping over the moon, so the king suggests that the Red Cow try to jump over the moon in order to stop her dancing. The Red Cow resists this idea because she “has been taught from my infancy that jumping was no occupation for a lady” (58), but eventually she gives in. The king blows a whistle, she jumps over the moon, and she lands back in her dandelion field.

The Red Cow is happy to be home and following her daily routine, but she soon begins to feel dissatisfied because she misses the dancing that had previously plagued her. At this point, she goes to Mary Poppins’s mother for advice. She says that the Red Cow must go look for another field where another star might fall out of the sky.

Jane and Michael suggest to Mary Poppins that the cow on the Lane must be looking for a star, which startles Mary Poppins. As Mary Poppins goes to turn on the lights, Jane and Michael look out the window, but the cow is no longer there.

One Tuesday morning, Michael wakes up with a powerful feeling that “he was going to be naughty” (63). He defies Mary Poppins’s instructions, dresses himself in Sunday clothes, speaks rudely, and behaves poorly to other members of the household. When Michael goes outside, he sees Miss Lark’s Andrew; Michael coaxes Andrew over with a dog biscuit in order to tie the dog to the fence by his tail. Michael then goes inside to his father’s study and covers himself in blue ink, which inspires his mother to send him to stand in the corner of the nursery. When all three of his siblings try to engage with him, Michael is rude to them, “enjoying his badness, hugging it to him as though it were a friend” (67).

Mary Poppins takes Jane and Michael and the twins out for a walk to the park, and during the walk, Michael gets into an argument with Mary Poppins over her suggestion that he “got out of bed the wrong side this morning” (67). Mary Poppins asks Michael to pick up a shiny object on the path, and the object turns out to be a compass. When Mary Poppins says “North!” they are all suddenly surrounded in cold and ice, and a polar bear appears to give Mary Poppins a hug. The polar bear gives them a gift of a herring before they travel on to “a leafy jungle from which came a noisy sound of squawking” (71). A macaw greets Mary Poppins and the children, asks her to baby-sit his two eggs while he gets some rest, and offers them bananas. He laments that Mary Poppins isn’t available to stay and take care of his nestlings.

Again, they spin and land “in a grassy clearing surrounded by bamboo trees” (72), where they rouse a panda bear from his nap. The panda bear asks Jane and Michael to help him get back to sleep by “tickl[ing] me gently behind the ears” (73), and then they travel on to a shore. Here, they meet a dolphin named Amelia and her son, Froggie. Mary Poppins throws the herring into the sea for the dolphins to chase, and as Michael is cheering for Froggie, he suddenly finds himself again in the park with Jane, the twins, and Mary Poppins.

Mary Poppins puts the compass into her pocket, ignoring Michael’s claim that the compass belongs to him. Soon, Michael’s behavior gets even worse. As he gets ready for bed, he sees the compass, so he takes it and commands “North, South, East, West!” (78), and he is horrified to see “four gigantic figures bearing down upon him” (78) with anger. Suddenly, he finds himself in something soft, and the figures disappear. Mary Poppins reminds Michael not to touch her things, bringing him a cup of warm milk to drink. He drinks slowly, thinking that he is warm, happy, and lucky to be alive.