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John and Barbara
One day, Michael and Jane were gone for the afternoon, attending a friend’s birthday party. The sun shone brightly through the nursery window and onto the twins’ cots, so Mary Poppins placed them in their pram and took them for a turn through the park.
“Butterfly, why won’t you let me catch you?” Barbara reached up her pudgy hands but always just missed it.
The butterfly hovered out of reach, laughing at her attempts. “You can’t catch me.”
Barbara began to cry. Mary Poppins said, “No need for tears. Wait until your ambulatory and you can chase butterflies with a net.”
Barbara’s tears stopped. “Is that what bigger children do? How silly.”
“Yes, it is, but it passes the time for them.” Mary wheeled them toward a bench where Miss Lark sat while Andrew ran around and around her. “Hello, Andrew,” Mary Poppins said. “You’ve met Barbara and John haven’t you?”
Andrew stopped long enough to say, “How do you do?”
“We’re happy to see you too,” John said. “It is a lovely day to be in the park.”
Andrew listened, considered and decided he agreed. “You babies are lucky Mary Poppins is walking with you. Miss Lark walks a bit, then sits, then walks on. How am I ever going to get any exercise?”
“What is exercise?” the boy asked.
“It’s running and wagging ones tail.” Andrew demonstrated.
Barbara wiggled her bottom. “I don’t have a tail. And I don’t run.”
“But you will,” Andrew warned.
“Have a tail?”
“No, run. But then you won’t be able to talk to me anymore.” Andrew sounded sad.
She giggled. “Then I don’t want to learn to run.”
“Barbara’s right. We’ll never run. We like talking to you, to the birds and the butterflies.” He grabbed a foot in one hand and tried to put it in his mouth. Maybe if he bit his toes.
Mary Poppins laughed. “You won’t be able to stop learning to run. But first you’ll learn to walk and when you do, you’ll no longer be able to understand them.”
“But you walk and sometimes run, Mary Poppins. Yet you can still understand us and Andrew.” Barbara tried to make sense of it all.
“Are you talking to the babies?” Miss Lark asked.
“Yes. They have to learn to understand us when we speak,” Mary Poppins replied.
“John, what did Miss Lark say?” Barbara wanted to know.
“I don’t know. Maybe Mary can tell us. Mary?”
“What is it, John?” Mary Poppins asked.
“Barbara wants to know what Miss Lark said.”
“Oh, she was commenting on how I talk to you.” Mary Poppins smiled.
“She doesn’t understand us, does she?” Barbara asked.
“No, nor does she understand Andrew.”
“When we learn to speak to her will we still understand Andrew?” John put a thumb in his mouth.
“No.”
“Then I don’t want to.” Barbara started crying again.
“Oh, Barbara. Everyone does after a time,” Mary Poppins said. “It’s not terrible, you know. Look at Jane and Michael.”
“They’re so big and noisy,” Barbara said through her tears.
“They’re noisy because they haven’t been talking to grownups for very long.”
Miss Lark stood. “Well, I must be off. Come, Andrew. Now where did that dog go to now?”
John watched her looking around and guessed she was looking for Andrew. “He’s under the bench.”
“Don’t tell her,” Andrew said. “I’d rather stay out here than go home for the moment.”
“Stay with us,” John begged.
“Yes, yes. Stay with us,” his sister repeated.
But Miss Lark once she found him, walked off, dragging poor Andrew behind her.
A leaf fell into the pram. Barbara grasped it with a pudgy hand. She forgot about Andrew as she focused on the scent and the shape and color of it.
“Please let me fall,” the leaf said.
“But I want to play with you.” Barbara smelled the sunshine in the leaf.
Just then, Mary Poppins’ friend Bert strolled up to them. “What’s this? Taking the fresh air?” he asked the babies.
“What’s he babbling on about?” Barbara rubbed her nose and let the leaf fall. The leaf let out a sigh of relief.
“Oh, Bert. So good to see you.” Mary Poppins smiled his way. “The babies just had a marvelous conversation with Andrew. Would you like to speak with them?”
“Oi, could I?” He moved his face closer to them in the pram, and before you could say ‘gor blimey’, he was able to understand their gurgles and they were able to understand his.
“Good-day, Mr. Sweep,” John said politely.
“G’ day to ya too, young John.” Bert smiled. “An’ to Miss Barbara.”
“I understood that.” Barbara clapped her hands. “Bert, will we really stop being able to talk to Andrew when we start walking?”
“If that’s wot Mary Poppins sez, than it’s true. Ya lose some of yer magic oncet you perambulate instead of bein’ pushed in a pram, ya see. And when yer teeth comes in.”
“It’s magic we have?” John asked.
“B’lieve so.” Bert nodded.
“I don’t want to start to walk, or to chew with teeth, or to understand the other grownups.” John put his toes in his mouth again and gummed them. But that hurt his foot, so he took them out. There had to be another way to keep him from starting to walk.
“John, that’s not the way,” Mary Poppins said. “In fact, you can’t avoid it.”
***
A week later, the babies were crawling on the nursery floor. Mary Poppins was about to lift them into their cots when Mrs. Banks walked in. She stood near the door. “My dear babies.” She smiled and beckoned to them.
They crawled toward her, but suddenly crawling wasn’t fast enough. John was first to pull himself up to his feet and toddled in his mother’s direction until he fell with a plop. Seeing him, Barbara wouldn’t be left behind. She stood on wobbly fat legs and took a step before she too fell.
“There you are, my sweet things. Are you excited about your birthday tomorrow?” Their mother cooed, but the sweetness in her voice wasn’t enough to stop John’s tears. “Soon you’ll be walking and talking to beat the band. Why, I’m sure I felt the beginnings of a tooth in Barbara’s mouth.”
John’s wails increased, not in response to his mother but because he’d been tempted to walk and he knew what that led to. “I don’t want to walk. I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want teeth. They’ll hurt my toes.”
“There, there, John,” Barbara took one of his hands in hers. “If we don’t want to walk, we won’t.”
But the next day at their birthday party, they were so excited, they each took three actual steps. And that night one tooth popped out of each of their gums.