Mr. Popper's Penguins (6 page)

“But Captain Cook and Greta are both fat and sleek, and the children have never been so rosy.”

“It may be very healthy,” said Mrs. Popper, as she mopped up the flood, “but it’s very untidy.”

“I will do something about it tomorrow,” said Mr. Popper.

S
O THE NEXT DAY
Mr. Popper called an engineer and had a large freezing plant installed in the cellar, and took Captain Cook and Greta down there to live. Then he had the furnace taken out and moved upstairs into the living room. It looked very odd there, but, as Mrs. Popper said, it was a relief at least not to have to wear their overcoats all the time.

Mr. Popper was quite worried when he found that all these changes were going to be very expensive. The refrigerating engineer was worried, too, when he found that Mr. Popper had practically no money. However, Mr. Popper promised to pay as soon as he could, and the man let him have everything on credit.

It was a good thing that Mr. Popper got the penguins moved when he did, because Mrs. Popper had been right about the eggs. The rookery had scarcely been moved to the basement when Greta laid the first egg. Three days later the second one appeared.

Since Mr. Popper knew that penguins lay only two eggs a season, he was astonished when, a little later, the third egg was found under Greta. Whether the change in climate had changed the penguins’ breeding habits, Mr. Popper never knew, but every third day a new one would appear until there were ten in all.

Now penguin eggs are so large that the mother can sit on only two at a time, and this created quite a problem. Mr. Popper solved it, however, by distributing the extra eggs under hot-water bottles and electric heating-pads, kept just at penguin-body heat.

The penguin chicks, when they began to hatch, were not so handsomely marked as their mother and father. They were fuzzy, droll little creatures who grew at a tremendous rate. Captain Cook and Greta were kept very busy bringing food to them, though, of course the Poppers all helped, too.

Mr. Popper, who had always been such a great reader, had no difficulty in thinking of names for the penguin children. They were Nelson, Columbus, Louisa, Jenny, Scott, Magellan, Adelina, Isabella, Ferdinand, and Victoria. Still, he was rather relieved that there were no more than ten to name.

Mrs. Popper, too, thought that this was about enough penguins for anybody, though they really did not make much difference to her in her housework — as long as Mr. Popper and the children remembered to close the cellar door in the kitchen.

The penguins all loved to climb the stairs that led up to the kitchen, and never knew when to stop unless they found the kitchen door closed. Then, of course, they would turn around and toboggan down the steps again. This made rather a curious noise sometimes, when Mrs. Popper was working in the kitchen, but she got used to it, as she had got used to so many other strange things this winter.

The freezing plant that Mr. Popper had got for the penguins downstairs was a large and good one. It made very large blocks of ice, instead of small ice cubes, so that soon Mr. Popper had made a sort of ice castle down there for the twelve penguins to live in and climb over.

Mr. Popper also dug a large hole in the cellar floor and made a swimming and diving pool for the birds. From time to time he would throw live fish into the pool for the penguins to dive for. They found this very refreshing, because, to tell the truth, they had got a little tired of canned shrimps. The live fish were specially ordered and were brought all the way from the coast in tank cars and glass boxes to 432 Proudfoot Avenue. Unfortunately, they were quite expensive.

It was nice that there were so many penguins because when two of them (usually Nelson and Columbus) got into a fight, and began to spar at each other with their flippers, the ten other penguins would all crowd around to watch the fight and make encouraging remarks. This made a very interesting little scene.

Mr. Popper also flooded a part of the cellar floor for an ice rink, and here the penguins often drilled like a sort of small army, in fantastic marching movements and parades around the ice. The penguin Louisa seemed especially fond of leading these marching drills. It was quite a sight to see them, after Mr. Popper had the idea of training Louisa to hold a small American flag in her beak while she proudly led the solemn parades.

Janie and Bill would often bring their little friends home from school with them, and they would all go down and watch the penguins for hours.

At night, instead of sitting and reading and smoking his pipe in the living room, as he had done before, Mr. Popper would put on his overcoat and take his things downstairs. There he would sit and read, with his mittens on, looking up from time to time to see what his pets were doing. He often thought about the cold, distant regions in which the little creatures really belonged.

Often, too, he thought how different his life had been before the penguins had come to keep him occupied. It was January now, and already he dreaded to think of the time when spring would come, and he would have to leave them all day and go back to painting houses.

T
HERE CAME A NIGHT,
however, when Mrs. Popper, having put the children to bed, stopped Mr. Popper on his way to the cellar.

“Papa,” she said, “I must talk to you. Come and sit down.”

“Yes, my love,” said Mr. Popper, “what is on your mind?”

“Papa,” said Mrs. Popper, “I’m glad to see you having such a nice vacation. And I must say that it’s been easier than usual to keep the place tidy, with you down in the basement all the time. But, Papa, what are we to do for money?”

“What is the trouble?” asked Mr. Popper.

“Well, of course, the penguins have to eat, but have you any idea what the bills for all those live fish are? I’m sure I don’t know how we’re ever going to pay for them. And the engineer who put in the basement freezing plant keeps ringing the doorbell and asking for his money.”

“Is our money all gone?” asked Mr. Popper quietly.

“Practically all. Of course when it is all gone, maybe we could eat the twelve penguins for a while.”

“Oh no, Mamma,” said Mr. Popper. “You don’t mean that.”

“Well, I don’t suppose I really could enjoy eating them, especially Greta and Isabella,” said Mrs. Popper.

“It would break the children’s hearts, too,” said Mr. Popper. He sat there thoughtfully for quite a while.

“I have an idea, Mamma,” he said at last.

“Maybe we could sell them to somebody, and then we would have a little money to live on,” said Mrs. Popper.

“No,” said Mr. Popper, “I have a better idea. We will keep the penguins. Mamma, you have heard of trained seals, acting in theaters?”

“Of course I have heard of trained seals,” answered Mrs. Popper. “I even saw some once. They balanced balls on the ends of their noses.”

“Very well then,” said Mr. Popper, “if there can be trained dogs and trained seals, why can’t there be trained penguins?”

“Perhaps you are right, Papa.”

“Of course I am right. And you can help me train the penguins.”

The next day they had the piano moved down into the basement at one end of the ice rink. Mrs. Popper had not played the piano since she had married Mr. Popper, but with a little practice she soon began to remember some of the pieces she had forgotten.

“What these penguins like to do most,” said Mr. Popper, “is to drill like an army, to watch Nelson and Columbus get in a fight with each other, and to climb up steps and toboggan down. And so we will build our act around those tricks.”

“They don’t need costumes, anyway,” said Mrs. Popper, looking at the droll little figures. “They already have a costume.”

So Mrs. Popper picked out three different tunes to play on the basement piano, one for each different kind of act. Soon the penguins knew, from hearing the music, just what they were to do.

When they were supposed to parade like a lot of soldiers, Mrs. Popper played Schubert’s “Military March.”

When Nelson and Columbus were to fight each other with their flippers, Mrs. Popper played the “Merry Widow Waltz.”

When the penguins were supposed to climb and toboggan, Janie and Bill would drag out into the middle of the ice two portable stepladders and a board that Mr. Popper had used when he was decorating houses. Then Mrs. Popper would play a pretty, descriptive piece called “By the Brook.”

It was cold in the cellar, of course, so that Mrs. Popper had to learn to play the piano with her gloves on.

By the end of January, Mr. Popper was sure the penguins were ready to appear in any theater in the country.

L
OOK HERE,”
said Mr. Popper at breakfast one morning. “It says here in the
Morning Chronicle
that Mr. Greenbaum, the owner of the Palace Theater, is in town. He’s got a string of theaters all over the country; so I guess we had better go down and see him.”

That evening — it was Saturday, the twenty-ninth of January — the Popper family and their twelve trained penguins, two of them carrying flags in their beaks, left the house to find the Palace Theater.

The penguins were now so well trained that Mr. Popper decided that it was not necessary to keep them on leashes. Indeed, they walked to the bus line very nicely in the following line of march: —