And here it is worth while remembering, since we are discussing Not Writing for Children, that neither the Sleeping Beauty nor Rumpelstiltzkin was re… - P. L. Travers

the Match-Man had two professions. He not only sold matches like any ordinary match-man, but he drew pavement pictures as well. He did these things turn-about according to the weather. If it was wet, he sold matches because the rain would have washed away his pictures if he had painted them. If it was fine, he was on his knees all day, making pictures in coloured chalks on the side-walks, and doing them so quickly that often you would find he had painted up one side of a street and down the other almost before you’d had time to come round the corner. On this particular day, which was fine but cold, he was painting.

Shall we, too, Mary Poppins?” he asked, blurting out the question. “Shall you, too, what?” she enquired with a sniff. “Live happily ever afterwards?” he said eagerly. A smile, half sad, half tender, played faintly round her mouth. “Perhaps,” she said, thoughtfully. “It all depends.” “What on, Mary Poppins?” “On you,” she said, quietly,

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.