Freddy and the Popinjay

by Walter R. Brooks

  “He’s a what?” Jimmy interrupted. But he lowered the slingshot.

  “A phoebe. They’re one of the most useful birds there is.”

  “What do you mean—useful?” Jimmy demanded. “Birds ain’t any use.”

  “That shows how much you know,” said Freddy. “Most birds live on bugs. If it wasn’t for birds, the farmers’ gardens would be all eaten up by bugs. Phoebes and robins and catbirds and warblers and flickers and peewees—”

  “Aw, you’re just making all those names up,” said Jimmy.

  “There are—I don’t know—probably a hundred different kinds of birds around here. But I wouldn’t expect you to know anything about them. You just like to be ignorant. All you want to do is go around with your silly slingshot, shooting people to make them jump.”

  “Is that so!” said Jimmy. “Well, I guess I know as much as you do!”

  “You don’t know one bird from another,” said Freddy—“except maybe robins and sparrows. You’re out in the woods a lot, and I bet you don’t know one tree from another either.”

  “I do so! I know maples and elms and—and oaks and—Well what’s that tree over there if you know so much?” Jimmy pointed at a slender tree with a dark striped trunk and large three-pointed leaves.

  Freddy looked. He didn’t know what it was.

  But it would never do to say so. “Suppose you tell me,” he said. “You’re the one that’s trying to prove that he isn’t ignorant.”

  “Yeah?” said Jimmy. “Well, do you know what it is?”

  “That isn’t the point,” said Freddy.

  “Oh yes it is,” Jimmy retorted. “If you don’t know and I don’t know, then you’re just as ignorant as I am.”

  Freddy saw that he had got backed into a corner. Of course there were several ways he could get out. He could get dignified and say that there seemed no use in continuing the discussion. Or he could suddenly charge at Jimmy and knock him over, and then run. He would probably be out of range before Jimmy could get up and put another stone in his slingshot. But he decided that the best way out was to admit that Jimmy was right. The more honest you are in an argument, the better chance you have of winning.

  So he laughed. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m just as ignorant about that tree as you are. But there’s one difference between us: I don’t want to stay ignorant. I’m going to find out what kind of tree it is. When I do, I’ll tell you.” And he started on his way.

  “Yah!” Jimmy jeered. “I bet I find out before you do!” And then as Freddy didn’t answer, but just kept on going: “Give me a leave, pig? Dare me to shoot you again?”

  Freddy didn’t turn around, but it took all his strength of mind to keep on walking slowly and not break into a gallop. His front legs were all right; they walked along in a quiet dignified way, but his hind legs, which were a fine mark for that terrible slingshot, kept trying to go faster, and he kept trying to stop them, so that every now and then he humped up in the middle when his hind legs got too close to his front ones, and then straightened out again when he persuaded the hind legs to drop back where they belonged.

  But Jimmy didn’t shoot. And when he finally got to a turn in the road, Freddy looked back. The boy had disappeared. Freddy heaved a sigh, and all the rest of the way into Centerboro his hind legs behaved themselves, and trotted along patiently in the rear, keeping their proper distance as they had been trained to do.

  Chapter 3

  Mr. Watt’s store was next door to the Centerboro Bank. In the show window were rows of eyeglasses of all kinds—those that hook over your ears, and those that perch astride your nose, and those you hold up on a handle and look through—and the frames were gold and silver and tortoiseshell and plastic, in a lot of different shapes. On a lower branch of a tree that grew up through the sidewalk close to the store sat J. J. Pomeroy. And with him was Mrs. Pomeroy.

  They were so absorbed in the window display that they didn’t see Freddy, and he stopped under the tree for a minute and listened.

  “I don’t agree with you, dear,” Mrs. Pomeroy was saying. “Those dark brown rims are too heavy for your face. You have very fine regular features, and I think in those rimless nose glasses you would look very distinguished. You could wear them on a black ribbon around your neck, like Mr. Weezer, the bank president.”

  “Well—maybe,” said J. J. Pomeroy doubtfully. “They look sort of fussy to me. I don’t want to look distinguished; I only want to be able to tell the difference between an angleworm and a rusty nail. That was pretty bad this morning.”

  “I agree with you there,” said Mrs. Pomeroy. “You’re ruining the children’s digestion. I was up all night with Junior after you fed him that rubber band. But seriously, dear, there’s no use getting something that isn’t becoming. Well, how about those gold rims? Gold is so dignified, I always think.” She glanced around and caught sight of Freddy, and at once became very much embarrassed, for she was a very shy and retiring bird.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” said Freddy, smiling at her. “Good morning, J. J.”

  “Oh, Mr. Freddy,” said Mrs. Pomeroy, “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but you have such good taste, and—well, I do hope you won’t let my husband get those dreadful heavy rims he seems so set on.”

  “Well, since all the glasses in the window are much too large for a robin anyway,” Freddy said, “I don’t see much point in making a selection now. I don’t even know if we can persuade Mr. Watt to make them—he’ll have to make a special pair anyway. It’s quite a job. But you leave it to me. I think I can manage it.”

  Mr. Watt was a small thin man with bushy grey hair and a little grey moustache. When the pig and the two robins went into the store, he came bustling forward. “Good morning—good morning—lovely morning isn’t it, Freddy—nice to see you again—what can I do for you?” He spoke so fast that his words tumbled over one another, and even his sentences sort of overlapped, so that sometimes he almost seemed to be saying two things at once. There were no periods in Mr. Watt’s conversation, so I haven’t put any in.

  “Well,” Freddy said, “I don’t know whether you can do anything for us or not.” He introduced the Pomeroys. “Mr. Pomeroy, here,” he said, “is getting so nearsighted that he can’t get food for his children any more. He can’t tell a potato bug from an old collar button, unless he gets down so close that he’s practically breathing down its neck. Of course, if he was collecting collar buttons that would be all right. But the bug doesn’t wait; it runs away. So what Pomeroy needs is a pair of glasses.”

  Mr. Watt pursed his lips and shook his head. “Never made glasses for a bird,” he said—“never have—never shall.”

  Freddy nodded. “I thought not,” he said. “I thought you couldn’t make ’em.”

  “Who said I couldn’t?” demanded Mr. Watt. “Could if I wanted to—don’t want to—lots of difference between can’t and won’t.”

  “Not much, Mr. Watt; not much,” said Freddy, looking the oculist squarely in the eye. Then he shook his head mournfully. Well, J. J., I guess we’ll have to take a trip to Syracuse. They’ve got good men up there who can fit you to glasses all right. As long as Mr. Watt doesn’t feel he could do a good job—”

  “Who said I couldn’t—hey? Who said it?—Not me!” snapped Mr. Watt. “Fitted glasses here—forty years—men, women and children—come to Watt, they say—‘Watt knows what’s what—Watt’ll fit you—make your eyes good as new—better than new—make ’em like telescopes—see a fly on a barn door at forty yards—’”

  “Yes, I know you do fine work,” Freddy said. “For people. But birds are different. You’d have to grind very small lenses, make a special little frame with side pieces that bend around back of his head because he hasn’t got any ears to hook them over. Very fine work—”

  “Pah!” Mr. Watt exclaimed. “Birds are no different—just smaller—smaller or bigger, what’s the difference?—Watt can make ’em big or small—fit an elephant or fit a flea.” He stopped
abruptly and dashed over to a chart that hung on the wall. There were rows of letters on it of different sizes, the biggest ones at the top. “Hey, you—Pomeroy—whatever your name is—perch on that chair—read that letter I’m pointing to.”

  “F,” said J. J. It was an M.

  Mr. Watt clicked his tongue angrily. “Blind as a bat!” he said. “That’s the way with you people—wait till you’re half blind, then come expect me to make you over—should have been here years ago—no, sit still—shut your left eye—now look through this glass—”

  Freddy winked at Mrs. Pomeroy, then sat down comfortably in a chair and watched as Mr. Watt tried glass after glass on first one eye and then the other. The oculist worked so fast that he fairly danced around the bewildered J. J. But pretty soon he was through, and after taking several measurements of the robin’s head, he said: “All right—hop down—glasses ready Thursday and they’ll be eight dollars.”

  Freddy sat down comfortably in a chair and watched Mr. Watt.

  “They’ll be what?” said Mr. Pomeroy. “Bu—but I haven’t—”

  “Come along, Pomeroy, come along,” Freddy interrupted quickly. “And thank you, Mr. Watt, for your trouble. It will be a great feather in your cap if you can make these glasses. I do hope you’re right about it.”

  “Right about it?—Right about it?—With the eyes I’ll give him this robin’ll be able to catch bugs up to ten o’clock at night—he’ll corner the worm market—he’ll be able to see a bug an inch underground—” He was still talking as Freddy hustled the two robins out into the street.

  “But, Freddy,” said Mr. Pomeroy, “I haven’t got eight dollars; I haven’t even got eight cents. We robins don’t use money much, and I never thought—” Mrs. Pomeroy began to cry.

  Freddy hadn’t thought either. But there was one thing about Freddy: when he started a thing he saw it through. Even if it cost eight dollars. “Now, now,” he said; “don’t you worry. I’ll lend you the money until we can find some way for you to make some. Let me see; you’re good at catching angleworms; how would it be to sort of set up in the angleworm business—sell them to fishermen?”

  Mr. Pomeroy said that he could do that, of course. “But eight dollars’ worth of angleworms would be an awful lot.”

  “About a barrel full, I should think,” said Freddy thoughtfully. He shivered slightly. “A barrel full of angleworms! I don’t like to think about it. No, there must be some pleasanter way.”

  “I don’t see what’s unpleasant about it,” Mrs. Pomeroy said. “We’re fond of angleworms in our family. And they’re very nourishing—”

  “Please, please!” Freddy begged her. “Can’t we talk about something else?—Ah, how do you do?” he said, turning and bowing deeply to a large, elegantly dressed woman who was getting down with some difficulty from the front saddle of an old-fashioned tandem bicycle, the rear saddle of which was occupied by a man in a chauffeur’s uniform. “May I help you?” he said, extending a fore trotter.

  “Why, Freddy; this is a great pleasure!” She gave him her hand and leaned heavily upon him as she stepped down to the curb—so heavily that Freddy’s knees gave a little. She was quite a large woman.

  But Freddy braced himself, and in a second more she was beside him on the sidewalk. When he had introduced the Pomeroys to her, she said: “You’re looking well, Freddy. And how are all the other animals—and my dear friend, Mrs. Wiggins?” She turned to the chauffeur. “Wait here, Riley.”

  “Yes, madam,” panted the chauffeur, and he took off his cap and mopped his forehead.

  “I’ve given up my car, now that gasoline is so scarce,” she explained to Freddy. “Had this old tandem in the stable, and so I have Riley take me around on it.”

  “That’s very patriotic,” Freddy said.

  “I’m afraid most of the patriotism falls on Riley. He does the pedalling, and I do the staying on.” She smiled at the chauffeur, and he stopped mopping and smiled back. You could see that he didn’t mind.

  Freddy thought nobody would mind doing things for the rich Mrs. Winfield Church, not because she was rich, but because she was so nice. Several years ago she had been a lot of help to the Bean animals when they were trying to find a boy named Byram, and afterwards she had come out to see them quite often. But she hadn’t been out now in over a year because, as she explained to Freddy, she wasn’t using the car, and she thought it was too much to ask of Riley to push her up all those hills.

  “But I’ve missed you animals,” she said, “and I want to see you. I hope that you will all come to my niece’s wedding next month. I’ve come into town to see about getting the invitations engraved, and your names are all on the list. And by the way,” she said, taking her bag off the handlebars of the tandem, “there is something perhaps you can help me with.” She opened the bag with fingers which sparkled and glistened with dozens of diamond rings—at least they looked like diamonds, but Freddy knew they weren’t. Mrs. Church was fond of jewelry, but she always bought it at the ten-cent store, because she said: “Why wear diamonds when you can get the same effect with glass at a fraction of the cost?” That shows you what a sensible person she was.

  She took out of her bag a piece of paper on which was painted in bright colors a coat of arms. “This is the coat of arms of our family—the Church family,” she said. “Three white churches on a green field, and that motto underneath—‘Safe as a church’—is our family motto. Rather nice, don’t you think? Then you see there’s this helmet on the top, and on the helmet is some kind of a bird. Do you know what the bird is?”

  The bird had a red breast, and lots of little curly brown feathers on its head that looked almost like a wig, and its tail was made up of long white plumes. Freddy had never seen anything like it.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Church. “You see, we want to have this printed at the top of the invitations. We thought it would look nice. Although to tell you the truth, I’m not at all sure that the Church family ever had a coat of arms. But my dear husband was very much interested in such things, and he hired a man to look it all up, and the man found this thing for him. My husband was never convinced that he had any right to it, because the man never offered any real proof. But it’s just as pretty, whether it belongs to us or not, don’t you think so?”

  “Well,” Freddy said, “the bird is pretty too, whether you know what he is or not.”

  “Yes. As long as nobody knows what he is. But suppose he turned out to be a butcher bird? Or one of those hawks that steal chickens? Don’t you see, people would say that probably the first Churches were murderers, or thieves. I just would like to be sure.”

  “Well,” said Freddy, “why don’t you make up a name for him? Why don’t you call him a—a popinjay?”

  “A popinjay? I don’t know what kind of bird that is.”

  “Neither do I,” said Freddy. “So probably he really is one.”

  Mrs. Church laughed. “That’s very smart of you, Freddy. So if anybody says: ‘Why, that’s a bird that steals chickens,’ I can say: ‘No indeed; the popinjay is a very kind and thoughtful bird; why, he often comes and looks after little chicks when the mother hen is busy.’ Or something like that, eh?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Freddy. “I don’t see why the popinjay isn’t also as brave as an eagle, and as beautiful as a golden pheasant, and as sweet a singer as a hermit thrush.”

  Mrs. Church laughed harder than ever, and when she laughed she shook, and all the tencent store diamonds sparkled and glittered in the sunshine until she was quite blinding. “Really, Freddy,” she said, “I don’t know why I don’t ask your advice oftener. You don’t know what a weight you have lifted from my mind. I wish there was something I could do for you in return.”

  “I think perhaps there is,” Freddy said. “But I’d like to think about it a little more before I ask you. May I call on you when I come into town next time—a week from today?”

  “Let me see,” said Mrs. Church. “A week from today I am giv
ing a luncheon for my niece. I can’t ask you because there will be no gentlemen present. But I tell you what—they’re all going to the movies after lunch. You come in about half-past two, and you and I can sit down comfortably at the table and eat up what is left and have a good long talk.

  Chapter 4

  Freddy had a lot of errands to do, so when the Pomeroys had thanked him for his trouble they flew off home, and he went on up to the printing office and left the material for the next issue of his paper with Mr. Dimsey, the printer. Then he went into the Busy Bee and bought the things on the list Mrs. Bean had given him—a spool of black thread, and some binding ribbon and things like that. And then he went in to see Miss Peebles.

  The sign over Miss Peebles’ little store said:

  HARRIET-HATS

  Latest Paris Creations

  Harriet was Miss Peebles, and the hats were in the show window—eight or ten of them; not very pretty ones, Freddy thought, although Miss Peebles’ hats were highly thought of in Centerboro. And after all, a hat was nothing, by itself; until you got a face under it you couldn’t tell whether it was good looking or not. As for “the latest Paris creations,” Freddy knew perfectly well that Miss Peebles made every hat she sold right in her own shop. But as everybody else in Centerboro knew it too, it couldn’t be said that Miss Peebles was trying to deceive anybody. “I guess it’s just advertising,” Freddy thought. “If it sounds nice, nobody expects it to mean anything.”

  In the shop, Mrs. Weezer, the wife of the President of the Centerboro Bank, was trying on hats. She had tried on seventeen, and was just perching the eighteenth—a dark red hat trimmed with forget-me-nots—on her grey hair when Freddy came in. He came in very quietly, and as her back was towards him, she didn’t see him. Miss Peebles had gone into the little room at the back of the store for another hat.

  Mrs. Weezer looked at herself in the mirror before which she was sitting and gave several disapproving sniffs. Being a banker’s wife, she was very hard to please. “No, no,” she said irritably; “it won’t do. Too sombre—much too sombre. I don’t know, Harriet, why you can’t get a little life into your hats. If these were poppies, now, instead of these pale forget-me-nots—”