Mary Poppins herself had flown away, but the gifts she had brought would remain for always.. - P. L. Travers

Mrs. Banks did not notice what was happening behind her, but Jane and Michael, watching from the top landing, had an excellent view of the extraordinary thing the visitor now did.
Certainly she followed Mrs. Banks upstairs, but not in the usual way. With her large bag in her hands she slid gracefully up the banisters, and arrived at the landing at the same time as Mrs. Banks. Such a thing, Jane and Michael knew, had never been done before. Down, of course, for they had often done it themselves. But up — never! They gazed curiously at the strange new visitor.

The lambs in their arms were as smooth as mushrooms, the flock at their heels unruffled. And amid all that froth of fleece, white and metrical as soap-suds, there was no sign of a black lamb.
What more could one ask, at a children’s Christmas Eve service? Yet I found that I did indeed want more, especially for the children’s sake — faces trodden by crows’-feet, signs of the ferment, one might almost say chaos, that this unprecedented event brought once and ever brings; something of life, even in carven faces, someone out of breath with running, someone stricken with joy.
And I dearly wanted a black lamb. For, without him, where are the ninety and nine? Flocks, like families, have need of their black sheep — he carries their sorrow for them. He is the other side of their whiteness. Does nobody understand, I wondered, that a crib without a black lamb is an incomplete statement?

Robertson Ay sat down on the perambulator this morning. He mistook it for an arm-chair. So it will have to be mended. Can you manage without it — and carry Annabel?” Mary Poppins opened her mouth and closed it again with a snap. “I,” she remarked tartly, “can manage anything — and more, if I choose.