“Well!” said Mr Wigg, looking very surprised indeed. “Don’t tell me it’s your birthday, too?” Jane shook her head.
“It’s not? Then this Laughing Gas must be catching! Hi – whoa there, look out for the mantelpiece!” This was to Michael, who had suddenly risen from the floor and was swooping through the air, roaring with laughter, and just grazing the china ornaments on the mantelpiece as he passed. He landed with a bounce right on Mr Wigg’s knee.
“How do you do,” said Mr Wigg, heartily shaking Michael by the hand. “I call this really friendly of you – bless my soul, I do! To come up to me since I couldn’t come down to you – eh?”And then he and Michael looked at each other and flung back their heads and simply howled with laughter.
“I say,” said Mr Wigg to Jane, as he wiped his eyes. “You’ll be thinking I have the worst manners in the world. You’re standing and you ought to be sitting – a nice young lady like you. I’m afraid I can’t offer you a chair up here, but I think you’ll find the air quite comfortable to sit on. I do.”
Jane tried it and found she could sit down quite comfortably on the air. She took off her hat and laid it down beside her and it hung there in space without any support at all.
“That’s right,” said Mr Wigg. Then he turned and looked down at Mary Poppins.
“Well, Mary, we’re fixed. And now I can enquire about you, my dear. I must say, I am very glad to welcome you and my two young friends here today – why, Mary, you’re frowning. I’m afraid you don’t approve of – er – all this.”
He waved his hand at Jane and Michael, and said hurriedly:
“I apologize, Mary, my dear. But you know how it is with me. Still, I must say I never thought my two young friends here would catch it, really I didn’t, Mary! I suppose I should have asked them for another day or tried to think of something sad or something—”
“Well, I must say,” said Mary Poppins primly, “that I have never in my life seen such a sight. And at your age, Uncle—”
“Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, do come up!” interrupted Michael. “Think of something funny and you’ll find it’s quite easy.”
“Ah, now do, Mary!” said Mr Wigg persuasively.
“We’re lonely up here without you!” said Jane, and held out her arms towards Mary Poppins. “Do think of something funny!”
“Ah, she doesn’t need to,” said Mr Wigg sighing. “She can come up if she wants to, even without laughing – and she knows it.” And he looked mysteriously and secretly at Mary Poppins as she stood down there on the hearth rug.
“Well,” said Mary Poppins, “it’s all very silly and undignified, but, since you’re all up there and don’t seem able to get down, I suppose I’d better come up, too.”
With that, to the surprise of Jane and Michael, she put her hands down at her sides and without a laugh, without even the faintest glimmer of a smile, she shot up through the air and sat down beside Jane.
“How many times, I should like to know,” she said snappily, “have I told you to take off your coat when you come into a hot room?” And she unbuttoned Jane’s coat and laid it neatly on the air beside the hat.
“That’s right, Mary, that’s right,” said Mr Wigg contentedly, as he leant down and put his spectacles on the mantelpiece. “Now we’re all comfortable—”
“There’s comfort and comfort,” sniffed Mary Poppins.
“And we can have tea,” Mr Wigg went on, apparently not noticing her remark. And then a startled look came over his face.
“My goodness!” he said. “How dreadful! I’ve just realized – the table’s down there and we’re up here. What are we going to do? We’re here and it’s there. It’s an awful tragedy – awful! But oh, it’s terribly comic!” And he hid his face in his handkerchief and laughed loudly into it. Jane and Michael, though they did not want to miss the crumpets and the cakes, couldn’t help laughing too, because Mr Wigg’s mirth was so infectious.
Mr Wigg dried his eyes.
“There’s only one thing for it,” he said. “We must think of something serious. Something sad, very sad. And then we shall be able to get down. Now – one, two, three! Something very sad, mind you!”
They thought and thought, with their chins on their hands.
Michael thought of school, and that one day he would have to go there. But even that seemed funny today and he had to laugh.
Jane thought: “I shall be grown up in another fourteen years!” But that didn’t sound sad at all but quite nice and rather funny. She could not help smiling at the thought of herself grown up, with long skirts and a handbag.
“There was my poor old Aunt Emily,” thought Mr Wigg out loud. “She was run over by an omnibus. Sad. Very sad. Unbearably sad. Poor Aunt Emily. But they saved her umbrella. That was funny, wasn’t it?”And before he knew where he was, he was heaving and trembling and bursting with laughter at the thought of Aunt Emily’s umbrella.
“It’s no good,” he said, blowing his nose. “I give it up. And my young friends here seem to be no better at sadness than I am. Mary, can’t you do something? We want our tea.”
To this day Jane and Michael cannot be sure of what happened then. All they know for certain is that, as soon as Mr Wigg had appealed to Mary Poppins, the table below began to wriggle on its legs. Presently it was swaying dangerously, and then with a rattle of china and with cakes lurching off their plates on to the cloth, the table came soaring through the room, gave one graceful turn, and landed beside them so that Mr Wigg was at its head.
“Good girl!” said Mr Wigg, smiling proudly upon her. “I knew you’d fix something. Now, will you take the foot of the table and pour out, Mary? And the guests on either side of me. That’s the idea,” he said, as Michael ran bobbing through the air and sat down on Mr Wigg’s right. Jane was at his left hand. There they were, all together, up in the air and the table between them. Not a single piece of bread-and-butter or a lump of sugar had been left behind.
Mr Wigg smiled contentedly.
“It is usual, I think, to begin with bread-and-butter,” he said to Jane and Michael, “but as it’s my birthday we will begin the wrong way – which I always think is the right way – with the Cake!”
And he cut a large slice for everybody.
“More tea?” he said to Jane. But before she had time to reply there was a quick, sharp knock at the door.
“Come in!” called Mr Wigg.
The door opened, and there stood Miss Persimmon with a jug of hot water on a tray.
“I thought, Mr Wigg,” she began, looking searchingly round the room, “you’d be wanting some more hot—Well, I never! I simply never!” she said, as she caught sight of them all seated on the air round the table. “Such goings on I never did see! In all my born days I never saw such. I’m sure, Mr Wigg, I always knew you were a bit odd. But I’ve closed my eyes to it – being as how you paid your rent regular. But such behaviour as this – having tea in the air with your guests – Mr Wigg, sir, I’m astonished at you! It’s that undignified, and for a gentleman of your age – I never did—”