Mr. Popper's Penguins

is how Greta came to live at 432 Proudfoot Avenue.
     

Chapter XI

Greta
     
    O CAPTAIN COOK did not die, after all.
    There were two penguins in the refrigerator, one standing and one sitting on the nest under the ice cubes.
    “They’re as like as two peas,” said Mrs. Popper.
    “As two penguins, you mean,” answered Mr. Popper. “Yes, but which is which?”
    At this moment the standing penguin jumped out of the icebox, reached inside and took one of the checkersfrom under the sitting penguin, whose eyes were closed in sleep, and laid it at Mr. Popper’s feet.
    “See, Mamma, he’s thanking me,” said Mr. Popper, patting the penguin. “At the South Pole that’s the way a penguin shows its friendship, only it uses a stone instead of a checker. This one must be Captain Cook, and he’s trying to show that he’s grateful to us for getting him Greta and saving his life.”
    “Yes, but how are we going to tell them apart? It’s very confusing.”
    “I will go down in the cellar and get some white paint and paint their names on their black backs.”
    And he opened the cellar door and started down, nearly tripping when Captain Cook unexpectedly tobogganed down after him. When he came up again, Mr. Popper had a brush and a small paint-can in his hands, while the penguin had a white C APT. C OOK on his back.
    “ Gook! ” said Captain Cook, proudly showing his name to the penguin in the icebox.
    “Gaw!” said the sitting Penguin, and then squirmingaround in her nest, she turned her back to Mr. Popper.
    So Mr. Popper sat down on the floor in front of the icebox, while Captain Cook watched, first with one eye, then with the other.
    “What are you going to call her?” asked Mrs. Popper.
    “Greta.”
    “It’s a nice name,” said Mrs. Popper, “and she seems like a nice bird, too. But the two of them fill the icebox, and pretty soon there will be eggs, and the next thing you know, the icebox won’t be big enough for your penguins. Besides, you haven’t done a thing about how I’m going to keep the food cold.”
    “I will, my love,” promised Mr. Popper. “It is already pretty cold for the middle of October, and it will soon be cold enough outside for Captain Cook and Greta.“
    “Yes,” said Mrs. Popper, “but if you keep them outside the house, they might run away.”
    “Mamma,” said Mr. Popper, “you put your food back in the icebox tonight, and we will just keep Greta and Captain Cook in the house. Captain Cook can help me move the nest into the other room. Then I will open all the windows and leave them open, and the penguins will be comfortable.”
    “They will be comfortable, all right,” said Mrs. Popper, “but what about us?”
    “We can wear our winter overcoats and hats in the house,” said Mr. Popper, as he got up to go around and open all the windows.
    “It certainly is colder,” said Mrs. Popper, sneezing. The next few days were even colder, but the Poppers soon got used to sitting around in their overcoats. Greta and Captain Cook always occupied the chairs nearest the open windows.
    One night, quite early in November, there was a blizzard, and when the Poppers got up in the morning, there were large drifts of snow all over the house.
    Mrs. Popper wanted to get her broom and have Mr. Popper bring his snow shovel to clear away the drifts, but the penguins were having so much fun in the snow that Mr. Popper insisted it should be left where it was.
    In fact, he even went so far as to bring an old garden hose up from the basement and sprinkle all the floors that night until the water was an inch deep. By the next morning all the Popper floors were covered with smooth ice, with snowdrifts around the edges near the open windows.
    Both Greta and Captain Cook were tremendously pleased with all that ice. They would go up on the snowdrift at one end of the living room, and run down, one behind the other, onto the ice, until they were running too fast to keep their balance. Then they would flop on their stomachs and toboggan across the slippery ice.
    This amused Bill and Janie so much that they tried it, too, on the stomachs of their overcoats. This in turn pleased the penguins greatly. Then Mr. Popper moved all the furniture in the living room to one side, so that the penguins and the children would have plenty of room for real sliding. It was a little hard at first to move the furniture, because the feet of the chairs had frozen into the ice.

    Toward afternoon the weather got