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 difficult to understand. "So that's why—?"
"Yes," Mr. Turvy nodded. "I heard you coming up the stairs and I did so long to be in. So, of course, as soon as that happened — there I was — out! And I'd be out still if Mary Poppins weren't holding on to me." He sighed heavily.
"Of course, it's not like this all the time. Only between the hours of three and six — but even then it can be very awkward."
"I'm sure it can," said Jane sympathetically.
"And it's not as if it was only In and Out—" Mr.
Turvy went on miserably. "It's other things, too. If I try to go up stairs, I find myself running down. I have only to turn to the right and I find myself going to the left. And I never set off for the West without immediately finding myself in the East."
Mr. Turvy blew his nose.
"And worst of all," he continued, his eyes filling again with tears, "my whole nature alters. To look at me now, you'd hardly believe I was really a happy and satisfied sort of person — would you?"
And, indeed, Mr. Turvy looked so melancholy and distressed that it seemed quite impossible he could ever have been cheerful and contented.
"But why? Why?" demanded Michael, staring up at him.
Mr. Turvy shook his head sadly.
"Ah!" he said solemnly. "I should have been a girl."
Jane and Michael stared at him and then at each other. What could he mean?
"You see," Mr. Turvy explained, "my Mother wanted a girl and it turned out, when I arrived, that I was a boy. So I went wrong right from the beginning — from the day I was born you might say. And that was the Second Monday of the month."
Mr. Turvy began to weep again, sobbing gently into his handkerchief.
Jane patted his hand kindly.
He seemed pleased, though he did not smile.
"And, of course," he went on, "it's very bad for my work. Look up there!"
He pointed to one of the larger shelves on which were standing a row of hearts in different colours and sizes, each one cracked or chipped or entirely broken.
"Now, those," said Mr. Turvy, "are wanted in a great hurry. You don't know how cross people get if I don't send their hearts back quickly. They make more fuss about them than anything else. And I simply daren't touch them till after six o'clock. They'd be ruined — like those things!"
He nodded to another shelf. Jane and Michael looked and saw that it was piled high with things that had been wrongly mended. A china shepherdess had been separated from her china shepherd and her arms were glued about the neck of a brass lion; a toy sailor whom somebody had wrenched from his boat, was firmly stuck to a willow-pattern plate; and in the boat, with his trunk curled round the mast and fixed there with sticking-plaster, was a grey-flannel elephant. Broken saucers were riveted together the wrong way of the pattern and the leg of a wooden horse was firmly attached to a silver Christening mug.
"You see?" said Mr. Turvy hopelessly, with a wave of his hand.
Jane and Michael nodded. They felt very, very sorry for Mr. Turvy.
"Well, never mind that now," Mary Poppins broke in impatiently. "What is important is this Bowl. We've brought it to be mended."
She took the Bowl from Jane and, still holding Mr. Turvy with one hand, she undid the string with the other.
"H'm," said Mr. Turvy. "Royal Doulton. A bad crack. Looks as though somebody had thrown something at it."
Jane felt herself blushing as he said that.
"Still," he went on, "if it were any other day, I could mend it. But to-day—" he hesitated.
"Nonsense, it's quite simple. You've only to put a rivet here — and here — and here!"
Mary Poppins pointed to the crack and as she did so she dropped Mr. Turvy's hand.
Immediately he went spinning through the air, turning over and over like a Catherine wheel.
"Oh!" cried Mr. Turvy. "Why did you let go? Poor me, I'm off again!"
"Quick — shut the door!" cried Mary Poppins. And Jane and Michael rushed across the room and closed the door just before Mr. Turvy reached it. He banged against it and bounced away again, turning gracefully, with a very sad look on his face, through the air.
Suddenly he stopped but in a very curious position. Instead of being right-side up he was upside down and standing on his head.
"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Turvy, giving a fierce kick with his feet, "Dear, dear!"
But his feet would not go down to the floor. They remained waving gently in the air.