A very old-fashioned idea, to my mind,” Jane and Michael heard the stern voice say. “Very old-fashioned. Quite out of date, as you might say. - P. L. Travers

Do you think that everything in the world is inside something else? My little Park inside the big one and the big one inside a larger one? Again and again? Away and away?” She waved her arm to take in the sky. “And to someone very far out there — do you think we would look like ants?” “Ants

unpacked a large cake of Sunlight Soap, a toothbrush, a packet of hairpins, a bottle of scent, a small folding armchair and a box of throat lozenges. Jane and Michael stared. “But I saw,” whispered Michael. “It was empty.” “Hush!” said Jane, as Mary Poppins took out a large bottle labelled “One Tea-Spoon to be Taken at Bed-Time.” A spoon was attached to the neck of the bottle, and into this Mary Poppins poured a dark crimson fluid. “Is that your medicine?” enquired Michael, looking very interested. “No, yours,” said Mary Poppins, holding out the spoon to him. Michael stared. He wrinkled up his nose. He began to protest. “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I won’t!” But Mary Poppins’s eyes were fixed upon him, and Michael suddenly discovered that you could not look at Mary Poppins and disobey her. There was something strange and extraordinary about her — something that was frightening and at the same time most exciting.

"There! Come down! What are you doing up there? Come down! We can't have the girl walking through the air. It's not natural!"

But Maia was going up and up.