Freddy and the Popinjay

Freddy had not thought that he would have to go back to Centerboro for another week, but the following afternoon he was again sitting in the back room of Miss Peebles’ shop. And with him was J. J. Pomeroy. Miss Peebles was sitting at her work table, and on the table was a sort of hat stand on which J. J. was perched. And Miss Peebles was trimming him. She was trimming him with the feathers she had given Freddy the day before. She sewed the fuzzy little brown feathers all over his head, and then she fastened the ostrich feather ends in among his tail feathers, so that he had a beautiful white plumy tail, almost as long as himself.

Freddy had tried to do the trimming job himself that morning, but although he could do many things with his trotters that other pigs can’t—such as using a pencil, and a typewriter, and even a fork and spoon—he wasn’t much good with needle and thread. So he had brought the robin down and asked Miss Peebles’ help.

When she had finished, J. J. admired himself in the mirror. He hopped back and forth in front of it, waggled his tail, and even stuck out his chest and tried to put on a noble expression, like a senator making a patriotic speech. But he hadn’t any features to speak of, and you can’t look like a senator without features. Not very much. His face still looked just like a robin’s. He was quite disappointed.

“Well, I’m not,” said Freddy. “You look just like that popinjay on Mrs. Church’s family coat of arms, and that’s what I want. I want to raise the eight dollars for those glasses of yours. Mrs. Church wouldn’t pay any senator eight dollars to sing at her niece’s wedding, but she’d pay a popinjay, I bet.”

“So that’s your scheme?” said Miss Peebles, and she laughed fit to kill. “You’re a caution, Freddy!”

“I think it’s a good scheme,” Freddy said. “Mrs. Church is going to have that coat of arms on the wedding invitations. My idea is to have it painted up big, only instead of painting the popinjay on top, J. J. will be perched there. And then when the wedding ceremony is over he will burst into song.”

“That is a very pretty idea,” Miss Peebles said. “But why do you go to all this trouble? If you asked Mrs. Church for the money, I’m sure she’d give it to you.”

“So am I,” said Freddy. “But J. J. wants to earn it. And I think he’s right. He wants to pay you for your trouble, too—”

“Nonsense,” said Miss Peebles. “It was a pleasure. I’ve never trimmed a live hat before. A hat!” she exclaimed suddenly. “My word, Freddy, I’ve got an idea! Wait a minute!”

She jumped up and went to the phone and called Mrs. Church. “Are you coming into the village this afternoon, Mrs. Church? Starting now? … Good.… Well, will you stop in? I’ve something that I’m sure will interest you.”

Freddy started asking questions, but she stopped him. “No. You do just as I say, will you? If it doesn’t work, then all right—you can talk to her. Now you, Mr.—Mr. Pomeroy, come out here and perch on this hat stand in the front window, among the other hats. Yes, you’re to try to look like a hat. But not until you see Mrs. Church coming towards the store. Then you put your head down and spread your wings—sort of flatten out. And then don’t move. I’ll do the rest.”

Freddy and Miss Peebles waited, watching the street outside through the window. And in a few minutes the tandem bicycle drew up at the curb and Mrs. Church got unsteadily down and started towards the shop. As she put her hand out to open the door, she glanced into the window, and then her hand dropped and her eyes opened wide and she fixed an amazed stare on J. J. Pomeroy, who had tilted forward on the hat stand and flattened out as Miss Peebles had shown him.

Then Mrs. Church pulled open the door and dashed into the shop. “Harriet!” she exclaimed. “The most extraordinary thing—that hat! It’s not sold, is it? I must have it. It’s exactly the popinjay on our crest—you know?”

“But where did you find it? I didn’t know such a bird existed. And—oh, dear!” She stopped short. “It’s against the law to trim hats with birds, isn’t it? To wear them, anyway. I couldn’t wear it—”

“Well, of course. You couldn’t very well trim them with live ones. What are you getting at, Harriet?”

Miss Peebles just raised her eyebrows and smiled. “All right, Mr. Pomeroy,” she said. “Will you come over here, please?” And J. J. flew over and perched on the back of her chair.

“Merciful heavens!” said Mrs. Church, and sank down into the chair which Freddy hastily pushed forward. Then she looked up at him. “You’re here again, Freddy? I suppose you’re at the bottom of this somehow. I don’t imagine you’re learning the millinery trade, though it wouldn’t surprise me any—the things you do!” She blinked her eyes, and then turned her head slowly and stared again at the robin. “But there isn’t any such bird!”

“Yes, ma’am, I am at the bottom of it,” Freddy said. “But perhaps Miss Peebles wants to explain.”

“Why, you see, Mrs. Church,” Miss Peebles said, “we knew you would be getting a new hat for the wedding. And since the popinjay is, in a way, your family bird, we knew that a hat with a popinjay on it would be exactly what you’d want. But of course, that was difficult—first, because it is against the law to trim hats with dead birds, and second, because there isn’t any such bird anyway. So we made up a popinjay for you, using a robin as base.”

“It’s Mr. J. J. Pomeroy, the robin I introduced to you yesterday,” Freddy said.

“I see,” said Mrs. Church, but she didn’t look as if she did. “How do you do, Mr. Pop—that is, Mr. Pomeroy. Perhaps I’d better call you Mr. Popinjay, to avoid confusion. Though how I can avoid it,” she added, “when I’m completely confused myself, I don’t know.”

“The point is,” said Miss Peebles, “that you can hire Mr. Pomeroy to act as your hat—you can wear him at the wedding. Freddy’s idea was to have him sing during, or right after, the ceremony, and of course, he could do that, too. You see, he needs money to pay for some new eyeglasses, and that was about the only way Freddy could think of in which he could earn it. Do you like the idea?”

“Like it? Of course I like it! The bird on the family crest singing for joy at the wedding—it’s a lovely idea! And as for wearing him—I think it would be marvelous! Mr. Pomeroy, how much would you charge to sing, and to allow me to wear you for the afternoon?”

J. J. said he hardly knew what to ask; he’d never done work like that before. “Would a dollar be too much?”

“Eight dollars!” exclaimed Mrs. Church. “That’s not very much. My goodness, an ordinary soprano would charge me at least twenty-five, and she wouldn’t be engaged to sit on my head during the ceremony either. Let’s say twenty-five anyway.”

“Well, you can buy glasses for your wife and children with what’s left over,” Mrs. Church said. She lifted off the hat she was wearing and set it on the counter. “But perhaps I’d better try you on.”

So J. J. flew up and lit on her head. He spread his wings and flattened his head and his body so that his beak was just over her left eye and Mrs. Church examined herself in the glass. “Really, it’s remarkable!” she said. “Very smart. My word, Mr. Popinjay, we’ve got style, you and I!” She smiled at him. “Don’t blink any more than you can help,” she said, “and try not to pull my hair. On the wedding day we’ll fasten something—a skewer would do—in my hair so you’ll have something to hang on to.” She took some bills out of her purse. “Here’s your twenty-five. And you had better come up to the house one day next week so we can rehearse. Freddy, you come along too. And you, of course, Harriet. I count on all of you to help me make the wedding a success.” She got up, and when J. J. had hopped down, put on her hat. “Goodbye for now. And thank you all. I don’t know what I should have done without you.”

Mrs. Church examined herself in the glass.

On the way back to the farm Mr. Pomeroy rode most of the time on Freddy’s back. He found that until he could practice using it, his new tail was more of a hindrance than a help. “You see,” he said, “when I’m flying I steer with my tail, and now that there’s so much more of it, it throws me off. I’ll have to get used to it.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to it,” said Freddy. He was thinking of the poem he had written yesterday, and not paying much attention to his passenger. All about how we can’t change our looks, and so we’d better be satisfied with what we’ve got. It had all seemed very true, and yet here today he had been surrounded by people who were not only trying to change their looks, but were succeeding at it. There was this robin, who had become a popinjay, and there was Mrs. Weezer, who had made herself look different with a red hat with forget-me-nots on it. And there was Mrs. Church wearing the popinjay.

Finally he spoke to J. J. about it.

“Well, I think your poem was perfectly right, Freddy,” the robin said. “You hadn’t ought to try to look like something that you aren’t. Of course, you can say that I am doing just that, but I’m doing it in order to make money. Just as when you put on one of your disguises you wear in your detective work, you’re doing it to solve a case.”

“But Mrs. Weezer and Mrs. Church aren’t doing it for business reasons. They’re just not satisfied with the way they look, and they want to look like someone else.”

“Do they want to look like someone else, or do they want to look more like themselves?” asked the robin. “That’s the answer. Take Mrs. Weezer. The forget-me-nots on her hat make her eyes look bluer. Well then, she’s just Mrs. Weezer, only more so. And Mrs. Church—if she wears her family crest, she looks more like a Church, doesn’t she?”

Freddy shook his head. “It’s kind of confusing,” he said. “That’s what always happens when I begin to think about my poems. Pretty soon I begin to wonder if I haven’t said just the opposite of what I mean.”

“There’s always two sides to every question,” said J. J. “And the funny part of it is, both sides are usually right. There wouldn’t ever be any arguments if one side was always right and the other always wrong.”

“And there sure are plenty of arguments,” said Freddy. “You know, J. J., what you have just said makes me surer than ever that there’s something to be said for that Witherspoon boy. Just thinking about his hurting Alice, and shooting at the rest of us all the time, you’d say he was a bad boy and ought to be locked up. But I don’t think he wants to be bad. I think other people have always been bad to him, and he doesn’t know how to act any different. Now if we were all to start being nice to him—ask him to play games with us and things like that—”

“Ha ha!” said the robin sarcastically. “If you’re going to play games with that kid, you wear a tin suit and carry a sock full of rocks.”

Freddy nodded. “I guess maybe you’re right. I guess maybe you ought to carry a machine gun, too.”