Mr. Popper's Penguins

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.

     

Chapter XIII

Money Worries
     
    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