Mr. Popper's Penguins

Pullmans. Because of getting on at the observation end of the train, Mr. Popper had to take the birds through the whole length of the train.
    It was easy enough to get them through the club car, even with the pail of fish to carry. In the sleeping cars, however, where the porter was already making up some of the berths, there was trouble.
    The porters’ ladders offered too much temptation to the penguins.
    There were a dozen happy Orks from a dozen ecstatic beaks. Popper’s Performing Penguins, completely forgetting their discipline, fought to climb the ladders and get into the upper berths.

    Poor Mr. Popper ! One old lady screamed that she was going to get off the train, whether it was going ninety miles an hour or not. A gentleman wearing a clergyman’s collar suggested opening a window, so that the penguins could jump out. Two porters tried to shoo the birds out of the berths. Finally the conductor and the brakeman, with a lantern, came to the rescue.
    It was quite a while before Mr. Popper got his pets safely into the baggage car.
    Mrs. Popper worried a little, at the start, over the idea of having Janie and Bill miss ten weeks of school while they were on the road, though the children did not seem to mind.
    “And you must remember, my love,” said Mr. Popper, who had never before been out of Stillwater, in spite of his dreams of distant countries, “that travel is very broadening.”
    From the start the penguins were a riotous success. Even their opening performance in Seattle went off without a hitch — probably because they had already rehearsed on a real stage.
    It was here that the penguins added a little novelty number of their own to the program. They were the first thing on the bill. When they finished their regular act, the audience went wild. They clapped and stamped and roared for more of Popper’s Performing Penguins.
    Janie and Bill helped their father herd the penguins off the stage, so that the next act could go on.
    This next act was a tightrope walker, named Monsieur Duval. The trouble was that instead of watching him from the wings, as they should have done, the penguins got interested and walked out on the stage again to watch him more closely.
    Unfortunately at this moment Monsieur Duval was doing a very difficult dance on the wire overhead.
    The audience, of course, had thought that the penguins were all through, and were very much pleased to see them return and line up with their backs to the audience and look up at Monsieur Duval, dancing so carefully on the wire high above them.

    This made everyone laugh so hard that Monsieur Duval lost his balance.
    “ Ork! ” said the penguins waddling away hurriedly, in order not to be under him when he fell.
    Cleverly recovering his balance, Monsieur Duval caught the wire by the inside of his elbow and saved himself. He was very angry when he saw the Popper Performing Penguins opening wide their twelve red beaks, as if they were laughing at him.
    “Go away, you stupid things,” he said to them in French.
    “ Ork? ” said the penguins, pretending not to understand, and making remarks to each other in penguin language about Monsieur Duval.
    And whenever they appeared, the more they interfered with the other acts on the program the better the audiences liked them.
     

Chapter XVII

Fame
     
    HE BIRDS soon became so famous that whenever it was known that the Popper Performing Penguins were to appear at any theater, the crowds would stand in line for half a mile down the street, waiting their turn to buy tickets.
    The other actors on the program were not always so pleased, however. Once, in Minneapolis, a celebrated lady opera singer got very much annoyed when she heard that the Popper Penguins were to appear on the same program. In fact, she refused to go on the stage unless the penguins were put away. So the stage hands helped Mr. and Mrs. Popper and the children get the birds off the stage and downstairs to a basement under the stage, while the manager guarded the stage entrance to make sure that the penguins did not get past.
    Down in the basement, the birds soon discovered another little flight of steps going up; and in another minute the audience was shrieking with laughter, as the penguins’ heads suddenly appeared, one by one, in the orchestra pit, where the musicians were playing.
    The musicians kept on playing, and the lady on the stage, when she saw the penguins, sang all the louder to show how angry she was. The audience was