Mr. Popper's Penguins

warmer and the ice began to melt. “Now, Papa,” said Mrs. Popper, “you really must do something. We can’t go on like this.“
    “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.

     

Chapter XII

More Mouths to Feed
     
    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 atremendous 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