Doctor Dolittle's Post Office

"Now, my idea, Speedy, is this," said the Doctor. "Regular foreign mails are difficult for the Fantippo post office because so few boats ever call there to bring or take the mails. Now, how would it be if you swallows did the letter carrying?"

"Well," said Speedy, "that would be possible. But, of course, we could only do it during certain months of the year when we were in Africa. And then we could only take letters to the mild and warm countries. We should get frozen if we had to carry mail where severe winters were going on."

"Oh, of course," said the Doctor. "I wouldn't expect you to do that. But I had thought we might get the other birds to help—cold-climate birds, hot-climate ones and temperate. And if some of the trips were too far or disagreeable for one kind of birds to make, we could deliver the mail in relays. I mean, for instance, a letter going from here to the North Pole could be carried by the swallows as far as the north end of Africa. From there it would be taken by thrushes up to the top of Scotland. There seagulls would take it from the thrushes and carry it as far as Greenland. And from there penguins would take it to the North Pole. What do you think?"

"I think it might be all right," said Speedy, "if we can get the other birds to go in with us on the idea."

"Well, you see," said John Dolittle, "I think we might, because we could use the mail service for the birds themselves, and the animals, too, to send their letters by, as well as the Fantippans."

"But, Doctor, birds and animals don't send letters," said Speedy.

"No," said the Doctor. "But there's no reason why they shouldn't begin. Neither did people write nor send letters once upon a time. But as soon as they began they found it very useful and convenient. So would the birds and animals. We could have the head office here in this beautiful island—in this Animals' Paradise. You see, my idea is, firstly, a post office system for the education and betterment of the Animal Kingdom, and, secondly, a good foreign mail for the Fantippans. Do you think we could ever find some way by which birds could write letters?"

"Oh, yes, I think so," said Speedy. "We swallows, for instance, always leave marks on houses where we have nested which are messages for those who may come after us. Look"—Speedy scratched some crosses and signs in the sand at the Doctor's feet—"that means 'Don't build your nest in this house. They have a cat here!' And this"—the Skimmer made four more signs in the sand—"this means 'Good house. Flies plentiful. Folks quiet. Building mud can be found behind the stable.'"

"Splendid," cried the Doctor. "It's a kind of short-hand. You say a whole sentence in four signs."

"And, then," Speedy went on, "nearly all other kinds of birds have a sign language of their own. For example, the kingfishers have a way of marking the trees along the river to show where good fishing is to be found. And thrushes have signs, too; one I've often seen on stones, which means 'Crack your snail shells here.' That's so the thrushes won't go throwing their snail shells all over the place and scare the live snails into keeping out of sight."

"There you are," said the Doctor. "I always thought you birds had at least the beginnings of a written language—otherwise you couldn't be so clever. Now all we have to do is to build up on these signs a regular and proper system of bird-writing. And I have no doubt whatever that with the animals we can do the same thing. Then we'll get the Swallow Mail going and we'll have animals and birds writing letters to one another all over the world—and to people, too, if they want to."

"I suspect," said Speedy, "that you'll find most of the letters will be written to you, Doctor. I've met birds all over creation who wanted to know what you looked like, what you ate for breakfast and all sorts of silly things about you."

"Well," said the Doctor. "I won't mind that. But my idea is firstly an educational one. With a good post office system of their own, I feel that the condition of the birds and animals will be greatly bettered. Only to-day, for example, some deer on this very island asked me what they should do about their nut trees which were nearly eaten up. I showed them at once how they could plant seeds and grow more trees. Heaven knows how long they had been going on short rations. But if they'd only been able to write to me, I could have told them long ago—by Swallow Mail."

Then the Doctor and Jip went back to Fantippo, carried by the piffilosaurus, who landed them on the shore under cover of night, so no one would see them. And in the morning John Dolittle called upon the King again.

"Your Majesty," said the Doctor, "I have now a plan to provide your country with an excellent service of foreign mails if you will agree to what I suggest."

"Good," said the King. "My Majesty is listening. Proceed. Let me offer you a lollipop."

The Doctor took one—a green one—from the box the King held out to him. King Koko was very proud of the quality of his lollipops—made in the Royal Candy Kitchen. He was never without one himself, and always wore it hung around his neck on a ribbon. And when he wasn't sucking it he used to hold it up to his eye and peer through it at his courtiers. He had seen white men using quizzing glasses, and he had his lollipops made thin and transparent, so he could use them in this elegant manner. But constant lollipops had ruined his figure and made him dreadfully stout. However, as fatness was considered a sign of greatness in Fantippo, he didn't mind that.

"My plan," said the Doctor, "is this: The domestic mails of Fantippo, after I have instructed the postmen a little more, can be carried by your own people. But the handling of foreign mails as well as the domestic ones is too much for them. And, besides, you have so few boats calling at your port. So I propose to build a floating post office for the foreign mails which shall be anchored close to the island called"—(the Doctor only just stopped himself in time from speaking the dreaded name)—"er—er—close to the island I spoke of to you the other day."

"I don't like that," said the King, frowning.

"Your Majesty need have no fear," the Doctor put in hurriedly. "It will never be necessary for any of your people to land upon the island. The Foreign Mail post office will be a houseboat, anchored a little way out from the shore. And I will not need any Fantippan postmen to run it at all. On the contrary, I make it a special condition on your part that—er—the island we are speaking of shall continue to be left undisturbed for all time. I am going to run the Foreign Mails Office in my own way—with special postmen of my own. When the Fantippans wish to send out letters to foreign lands they must come by canoe and bring them to the houseboat post office. But incoming letters addressed to the people in Fantippo shall be delivered at the doors of the houses in the regular way. What do you say to that?"

"I agree," said the King. "But the stamps must all have my beautiful face upon them, and no other."

"Very good," said the Doctor. "That can be arranged. But it must be clearly understood that from now on the foreign mails shall be handled by my own postman—in my way. And after I have got the Domestic post office running properly in Fantippo you must see to it that it continues to work in order. If you will do that in a few weeks' time I think I can promise that your kingdom shall have the finest mail service in the world."

Then the Doctor asked Speedy to send off messages through the birds to every corner of the earth. And to ask all the leaders of seagulls, tomtits, magpies, thrushes, stormy petrels, finches, penguins, vultures, snow buntings, wild geese and the rest to come to No-Man's-Land, because John Dolittle wanted to speak to them.

And in the meantime he went back and continued the work of getting the domestic mail service in good running order at the post office at Fantippo.

So the good Speedy sent off messengers; and all around the world and back again word was passed from bird to bird that John Dolittle, the famous animal doctor, wished to see all the leaders of all kinds of birds, great and small.

And presently in the big hollow in the centre of No-Man's-Land they began to arrive. After three days Speedy came to the Doctor and said:

"All right, Doctor, they are ready for you now."

A good strong canoe had by this time been put at the Doctor's service by the King, who was also having the post office houseboat built at the Doctor's orders.

So John Dolittle got into his canoe and came at length to the same hill where he had before gazed out over the pleasant hollow of the Animals' Paradise. And with the Skimmer on his shoulder he looked down into a great sea of bird faces—leaders all—every kind, from a hummingbird to an albatross. And taking a palm leaf and twisting it into a trumpet, so that he could make himself heard, he began his great inauguration speech to the leaders which was to set working the famous Swallow Mail Service.

After the Doctor had finished his speech and told the leaders what it was he meant to do, the birds of the world applauded by whistling and screeching and flapping their wings, so that the noise was terrible. And in the streets of Fantippo the natives whispered it about that the dragons were fighting one another in No-Man's-Land.

Then the Doctor passed down among the birds and, taking a notebook, he spoke to each leader in turn, asking him questions about the signs and sign language that his particular kind of bird was in the habit of using. And the Doctor wrote it all down in the notebook and took it home with him and worked over it all night—promising to meet the leaders again the following day.

And on the morrow, crossing once again to the island, he went on with the discussion and planning and arrangement. It was agreed that the Swallow Mail Service should have its head office here in No-Man's-Land. And that there should be branch offices at Cape Horn, Greenland, in Christmas Island, Tahiti, Kashmir, Thibet and Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. Most of the mails were arranged so that those birds who migrated or went to other lands in the winter and back again in summer should carry the letters on their regular yearly journeys. And as there are some kinds of birds crossing from one land to another in almost every week of the year, this took care of much of the mails without difficulty.

Then, of course, there were all those birds who don't leave their home lands in winter, but stay in one country all the time. The leaders of these had come under special guidance of other birds to oblige the Doctor by being present at the great meeting. They promised to have their people all the year round take care of letters that were brought to their particular countries to be delivered. So between one thing and another, much of the planning and arrangement of the service was got through in these first two meetings.

Then the Doctor and the leaders agreed upon a regular kind of simple, easy writing for all birds to use, so that the addresses on the envelopes could be understood and read by the post birds. And at last John Dolittle sent them off home again, to instruct their relatives in this new writing and reading and explain to all the birds of all the world how the post office was going to work and how much good he hoped it would do for the education and betterment of the Animal Kingdom. Then he went home and had a good sleep.

The next morning he found that King Koko had got his post office houseboat ready and finished—and very smart it looked. It was paddled out and anchored close to the shore of the island. Then Dab-Dab, Jip, Too-Too, Gub-Gub, the pushmi-pullyu and the white mouse were brought over, and the Doctor gave up his house on the main street of Fantippo and settled down to live at the Foreign Mails post office for the remainder of his stay.

And now John Dolittle and his animals got tremendously busy arranging the post office, its furniture, the stamp drawers, the postcard drawers, the weighing scales, the sorting bags and all the rest of the paraphernalia. Dab-Dab, of course, was housekeeper, as usual, and she saw to it that the post office was swept properly every morning. Jip was the watchman and had charge of locking up at night and opening in the morning. Too-Too, with his head for mathematics, was given the bookkeeping, and he kept account of how many stamps were sold and how much money was taken in. The Doctor ran the information window and answered the hundred and one questions that people are always asking at post offices. And the good and trusty Speedy was here, there and everywhere.

And this was how the first letter was sent off by the Swallow Mail: King Koko himself came one morning and, putting his large face in at the information window, asked:

"What is the fastest foreign mail delivery ever made by any post office anywhere in the world?"

"The British post office is now boasting," said the Doctor, "that it can get a letter from London to Canada in fourteen days."

"All right," said the King. "Here's a letter to a friend of mine who runs a shoe-shine parlor in Alabama. Let me see how quickly you can get me an answer to it."

Now, the Doctor really had not got everything ready yet to work the foreign mails properly and he was about to explain to the King. But Speedy hopped up on the desk and whispered:

"Give me that letter, Doctor. We'll show him."

Then going outside, he called for Quip the Carrier.

"Quip," said Speedy, "take this letter to the Azores as fast as you can. There you'll just catch the White Tailed Carolina Warblers about to make their summer crossing to the United States. Give it to them and tell them to get the answer back here, as quick as they know how."

In a flash Quip was gone, seaward.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the King brought that letter to the Doctor. And when His Majesty woke up in the morning and came down to breakfast there was the answer to it lying beside his plate!

PART II

Another thing in which the Doctor's post office was peculiar was its pens. Most post offices, the Doctor had found, always had abominably bad pens that spluttered and scratched and wouldn't write. In fact very many post offices even nowadays seem to pride themselves on their bad pens. But the Doctor saw to it that his pens were of the very best quality. Of course, in those times there were no steel pens. Only quills were used. And John Dolittle got the albatrosses and the seagulls to keep for him their tail feathers which fell out in the moulting season. And of course, with such a lot of quills to choose from, it was easy to have the best pens in the post office.

Still another thing in which the Doctor's post office was different from all others was the gum used on the stamps. The supply of gum which the King had been using for his stamps ran short and the Doctor had to set about discovering and making a new kind. And after a good deal of experiment he invented a gum made of licorice, which dried quickly and worked very well. But, as I have said, the Fantippans were very fond of sweetmeats. And soon after the new gum was put into use the post office was crowded with people buying stamps by the hundred.

At first the Doctor could not understand this sudden new rush of business—which kept Too-Too, the cashier, working overtime every night, adding up the day's takings. The post office safe could hardly hold all the money taken in and the overflow had to be put in a vase on the kitchen mantelpiece.

But presently the Doctor noticed that after they had licked the gum off the stamps, the customers would bring them back and want to exchange them for money again. Now, it is a rule that all post offices have to exchange their own stamps, when asked, for the price paid for them. So long as they are not torn or marked it doesn't matter whether the gum has been licked off or not. So the Doctor saw that he would have to change his kind of gum if he wanted to keep stamps that would stick.

And one day the King's brother came to the post office with a terrible cough and asked him in the same breath (or gasp) to give him five half-penny stamps and a cure for a cough. This gave the Doctor an idea. And the next gum which he invented for his stamps he called whooping-cough gum. He made it out of a special kind of sweet, sticky cough-mixture. He also invented a bronchitis gum, a mumps gum and several others. And whenever there was a catching disease in the town the Doctor would see that the proper kind of gum to cure it was issued on the stamps. It saved him a lot of trouble, because the people were always bothering him to cure colds and sore throats and things. And he was the first Postmaster General to use this way of getting rid of sickness—by serving round pleasant medicine on the backs of stamps. He called it stamping out an epidemic.

One evening at six o'clock Jip shut the doors of the post office as usual, and hung up the sign "Closed" as he always did at that hour. The Doctor heard the bolts being shot and he stopped counting postcards and took out his pipe to have a smoke.

The first hard work of getting the post office in full swing was now over. And that night John Dolittle felt when he heard the doors being shut that at last he could afford to keep more regular hours and not be working all the time. And when Jip came inside the Registered Mail booth he found the Doctor leaning back in a chair with his feet on the desk, gazing around him with great satisfaction.

"Well, Jip," said he with a sigh, "we now have a real working post office."

"Yes," said Jip, putting down his watchman's lantern, "and a mighty good one it is, too. There isn't another like it anywhere."

"You know," said John Dolittle, "although we opened more than a week ago I haven't myself written a single letter yet. Fancy living in a post office for a week and never writing a letter! Look at that drawer there. Ordinarily the sight of so many stamps would make me write dozens of letters. All my life I never had a stamp when I really wanted to write a letter. And—funny thing!—now that I'm living and sleeping in a post office I can't think of a single person to write to."

"It's a shame," said Jip. "And you with such beautiful handwriting too—as well as a drawerful of stamps! Never mind; think of all the animals that are waiting to hear from you."

"Of course, there's Sarah," the Doctor went on puffing at his pipe dreamily. "Poor dear Sarah! I wonder whom she married. But there you are, I haven't her address. So I can't write to Sarah. And I don't suppose any of my old patients would want to hear from me."

"I know!" cried Jip, "write to the Cats'-Meat-Man."

"He can't read," said the Doctor gloomily.

"No, but his wife can," said Jip.

"That's true," murmured the Doctor. "But what shall I write to him about?"

Just at that moment Speedy-the-Skimmer came in and said:

"Doctor, we've got to do something about the city deliveries in Fantippo. My post-birds are not very good at finding the right houses to deliver the letters. You see we swallows, although we nest in houses, are not regular city birds. We pick out lonely houses as a rule—in the country. City streets are a bit difficult for swallows to find their way round in. Some of the post-birds have brought back the letters they took out this morning to deliver, saying they can't find the houses they are addressed to."

"Humph!" said the Doctor. "That's too bad. Let me think a minute. Oh, I know I'll send for Cheapside."

"Who is Cheapside?" asked Speedy.

"Cheapside is a London sparrow," said the Doctor, "who visits me every summer in Puddleby. The rest of the year he lives around St. Paul's Cathedral. He builds his nest in St. Edmund's left ear."

"Where?" cried Jip.

"In the left ear of a statue of St. Edmund on the outside of the chancel—the cathedral, you know," the Doctor explained. "Cheapside's the very fellow we want for city deliveries. There's nothing about houses and towns he doesn't know. I'll send for him right away."

"I'm afraid," said Speedy, "that a post-bird—unless he was a city bird himself—would have a hard job finding a sparrow in London. It's an awful big city, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's so," said John Dolittle.

"Listen, Doctor," said Jip. "You were wondering just now what to write the Cats'-Meat-Man about. Let Speedy write the letter to Cheapside in bird scribble and you inclose it in a letter to the Cats'-Meat-Man. Then when the sparrow comes to Puddleby for his summer visit the Cats'-Meat-Man can give it to him."

"Splendid!" cried the Doctor. And he snatched a piece of paper off the desk and started to write.

"And you might ask him too," put in Dab-Dab who had been listening, "to take a look at the back windows of the house to see that none of them is broken. We don't want the rain coming in on the beds."

"All right," said the Doctor. "I'll mention that."

So the Doctor's letter was written and addressed to Matthew Mugg, Esquire, Cats' Meat Merchant, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, Slopshire, England. And it was sent off by Quip-the-Carrier.

The Doctor did not expect an answer to it right away because the Cats'-Meat-Man's wife was a very slow reader and a still slower writer. And anyhow, Cheapside could not be expected to visit Puddleby for another week yet. He always stayed in London until after the Easter Bank Holiday. His wife refused to let him leave for the country till the spring family had been taught by their father how to find the houses where people threw out crumbs; how to pick up oats from under the cab horses' nose bags without being stamped on by the horses' hoofs; how to get about in the trafficky streets of London and a whole lot of other things that young city birds have to know.

In the meantime, while Quip was gone, life went forward busily and happily at the Doctor's post office. The animals, Too-Too, Dab-Dab, Gub-Gub, the pushmi-pullyu, the white mouse and Jip all agreed that they found living in a houseboat post office great fun. Whenever they got tired of their floating home they would go off for picnic parties to the Island of No-Man's-Land, which was now more often called by the name John Dolittle had given it, "the Animals' Paradise."

On these trips too, the Doctor sometimes accompanied them. He was glad to, because he so got an opportunity of talking with the many different kinds of animals there about the signs they were in the habit of using. And on these signs, which he carefully put down in notebooks, he built up a sort of written language for animals to use—or animal scribble, as he called it—the same as he had done with the birds.

Whenever he could spare the time he held afternoon scribbling classes for the animals in the Great Hollow. And they were very well attended. He found the monkeys, of course, the easiest to teach and, because they were so clever, he made some of them into assistant teachers. But the zebras were quite bright too. The Doctor discovered that these intelligent beasts had ways of marking and twisting the grasses to show where they had smelled lions about—though, happily, they did not have to use this trick in the Animals' Paradise but had brought it with them when they had swum across from the mainland of Africa.

The Doctor's pets found it quite thrilling to go through the mail that arrived each day to see if there were any letters for them. At the beginning of course there wasn't much. But one day Quip had returned from Puddleby with an answer to the Doctor's letter to the Cats'-Meat-Man. Mr. Matthew Mugg had written (through his wife) that he had hung the letter for Cheapside on an apple tree in the garden where the sparrow would surely see it when he arrived. The windows of the house were all right, he wrote; but the back door could do with a coat of paint.

And while Quip had been waiting for this letter to be written he had filled in the time at Puddleby by gossiping with all the starlings and blackbirds in the Doctor's garden about the wonderful new Animals' post office on the island of No-Man's-Land. And pretty soon every creature in and around Puddleby had got to hear of it.

After that, of course, letters began to arrive at the houseboat for the Doctor's pets. And one morning, when the mail was sorted, there was a letter for Dab-Dab from her sister; one for the white mouse written by a cousin from the Doctor's bureau drawer; one for Jip from the collie who lived next door in Puddleby and one for Too-Too, telling him he had a new family of six young ones in the rafters of the stable. But there was nothing for Gub-Gub. The poor pig was nearly in tears at being left out. And when the Doctor went into town that afternoon Gub-Gub asked could he come along.

The next day the post-birds complained that the mail was an extra heavy one. And when it was sorted, there were ten thick letters for Gub-Gub and none for anybody else. Jip got suspicious about this and looked over Gub-Gub's shoulder while he opened them. In each one there was a banana skin.

"Who sent you those?" asked Jip.

"I sent them to myself," said Gub-Gub, "from Fantippo yesterday. I don't see why you fellows should get all the mail. Nobody writes to me, so I write to myself."

"Why, Cheapside!" cried John Dolittle. "At last you've come. My, but it's good to see you! Did you have a pleasant journey?"

"Not bad—not 'alf bad," said Cheapside, eyeing some crumbs from the Doctor's lunch which lay upon the desk. "No storms. Pretty decent travellin'. 'Ot? Well, I should say it was 'ot. 'Ot enough for an 'Ottentot!... Quaint place you 'ave 'ere—sort of a barge?"

By this time all the animals had heard Cheapside arriving and they came rushing in to see the traveler and to hear the news of Puddleby and England.

"How is the old horse in the stable?" asked John Dolittle.

"Pretty spry," said Cheapside. "Course 'e ain't as young as 'e used to be. But 'e's lively enough for an old 'un. 'E asked me to bring you a bunch of crimson ramblers—just bloomin' over the stable door, they was. But I says to 'im, I says, 'What d'yer take me for, an omnibus?' Fancy a feller at my time of life carrying a bunch of roses all the way down the Atlantic! Folks would think I was goin' to a weddin' at the South Pole."

"Gracious, Cheapside!" said the Doctor, laughing. "It makes me quite homesick for England to hear your Cockney chirp."

"And me, too," sighed Jip. "Were there many rats in the woodshed, Cheapside?"

"'Undreds of them," said the sparrow—"as big as rabbits. And that uppish you'd think they owned the place!"

"I'll soon settle them, when I get back," said Jip. "I hope we go soon."

"How does the garden look, Cheapside?" asked the Doctor.

"A1," said the sparrow. "Weeds in the paths, o' course. But the iris under the kitchen window looked something lovely, they did."

"Anything new in London?" asked the white mouse who was also city bred.

"Yes," said Cheapside. "There's always something doing in good old London. They've got a new kind of cab that goes on two wheels instead of four. A man called 'Ansom invented it. Much faster than the old 'ackneys they are. You see 'em everywhere. And there's a new greengrocer's shop near the Royal Exchange."

"I'm going to have a greengrocer's shop of my own when I grow up," murmured Gub-Gub, "—in England where they grow good vegetables—I'm awfully tired of Africa—and then I'll watch the new vegetables coming into season all the year round."

"He's always talking about that," said Too-Too. "Such an ambition in life to have—to run a greengrocer's shop!"

"Ah, England!" cried Gub-Gub sentimentally. "What is there more beautiful in life than the heart of a young lettuce in the Spring?"

"'Ark at 'im," said Cheapside, raising his eyebrows. "Ain't 'e the poetical porker? Why don't you write a bunch of sonnets to the Skunk-Kissed-Cabbages of Louisiana, Mr. Bacon?"

"Well, now, look here, Cheapside," said the Doctor. "We want you to get these city deliveries straightened out for us in the town of Fantippo. Our post birds are having great difficulty finding the right houses to take letters to. You're a city-bird, born and bred. Do you think you can help us?"

"I'll see what I can do for you, Doc," said the Sparrow, "after I've taken a look around this 'eathen town of yours. But first I want a bath. I'm all heat up from flying under a broiling sun. Ain't you got no puddles round here for a bird to take a bath in?"

"No, this isn't puddly climate," said the Doctor. "You're not in England, you know. But I'll bring you my shaving mug and you can take a bath in that."

"Mind, you wash the soap out first, Doc," chirped the Sparrow, "it gets into my eyes."

The next day after Cheapside had had a good sleep to rest up from his long journey the Doctor took the London sparrow to show him around the town of Fantippo.

"Well, Doc," said Cheapside after they had seen the sights, "as a town I don't think much of it—really, I don't. It's big. I'll say that for it. I 'ad no idea they 'ad towns as big as this in Africa. But the streets is so narrow! I can see why they don't 'ave no cabs 'ere—'ardly room for a goat to pass, let alone a four-wheeler. And as for the 'ouses, they seem to be made of the insides of old mattresses. The first thing we'll 'ave to do is to make old King Cocoanut tell 'is subjects to put door knockers on their doors. What is 'ome without a door knocker, I'd like to know? Of course, your postmen can't deliver the letters, when they've no knockers to knock with."

"I'll attend to that," said the Doctor. "I'll see the King about it this afternoon."

"And then, they've got no letter boxes in the doors," said Cheapside. "There ought to be slots made to poke the letters in. The only place these bloomin' 'eathens have for a postman to put a letter is down the chimney."

"Very well," said the Doctor. "I'll attend to that, too. Shall I have the letter boxes in the middle of the door, or would you like them on one side?"

"Put 'em on each side of the doors—two to every 'ouse," said Cheapside.

"What's that for?" asked the Doctor.

"That's a little idea of my own," said the Sparrow. "We'll 'ave one box for the bills and one for sure-enough letters. You see, people are so disappointed when they 'ear the postman's knock and come to the door, expecting to find a nice letter from a friend or news that money's been left them and all they get is a bill from the tailor. But if we have two boxes on each door, one marked 'Bills,' and the other 'Letters,' the postman can put all the bills in one box and the honest letters in the other. As I said, it's a little idea of my own. We might as well be real up-to-date. What do you think of it?"

"I think it's a splendid notion," said the Doctor. "Then the people need only have one disappointment—when they clear the bill box on the day set for paying their debts."

"That's the idea," said Cheapside. "And tell the post-birds—as soon as we've got the knockers on—to knock once for a bill and twice for a letter, so the folks in the 'ouse will know whether to come and get the mail or not. Oh, I tell you, we'll show these poor pagans a thing or two before we're finished! We'll 'ave a post office in Fantipsy that really is a post office. And, now, 'ow about the Christmas boxes, Doctor? Postmen always expect a handsome present around Christmas time, you know."

"Well, I'm rather afraid," said the Doctor doubtfully, "that these people don't celebrate Christmas as a holiday."

"Don't celebrate Christmas!" cried Cheapside in a shocked voice. "What a disgraceful scandal! Well, look here, Doctor. You just tell King Cocoa-butter that if 'e and 'is people don't celebrate the festive season by giving us post-birds Christmas-boxes there ain't going to be no mail delivered in Fantipsy from New Year's to Easter. And you can tell 'im I said so. It's 'igh time somebody hen-lightened 'is hignorance."

"All right," said the Doctor, "I'll attend to that, too."

"Tell 'im," said Cheapside, "we'll expect two lumps of sugar on every doorstep Christmas morning for the post-birds. No sugar, no letters!"

That afternoon the Doctor called upon the King and explained to him the various things that Cheapside wanted. And His Majesty gave in to them, every one. Beautiful brass knockers were screwed on all the doors—light ones, which the birds could easily lift. And very elegant they looked—by far the most up-to-date part of the ramshackle dwellings. The double boxes were also put up, with one place for bills and one for the letters.

John Dolittle instructed King Koko as well in the meaning of Christmas time, which should be a season for giving gifts. And among the Fantippo people the custom of making presents at Christmas became very general—not only to postmen, but to friends and relatives, too.

That is why when, several years after the Doctor had left this country, some missionaries visited that part of Africa, they found to their astonishment that Christmas was celebrated there, although the people were heathens. But they never learned that the custom had been brought about by Cheapside, the cheeky London sparrow.

And now very soon Cheapside took entire charge of the city delivery of mails in Fantippo. Of course, as soon as the mail began to get heavy, when the people got the habit of writing more to their friends and relatives, Cheapside could not deal with all the mail himself. So he sent a message by a swallow to get fifty sparrows from the streets of London (who were, like himself, accustomed to city ways), to help him with the delivery of letters. And around the native holiday seasons, the Harvest Moon and the Coming of the Rains, he had to send for fifty more to deal with the extra mail.

And if you happened to pass down the main street of Fantippo at nine in the morning or four in the afternoon you would hear the Rat-tat-tat of the post-sparrows, knocking on the doors—Tat-tat, if it was a real letter, and just Rat! if it was a bill.

Of course, they could not carry more than one or two letters at a time—being such small birds. But it only took them a moment to fly back to the houseboat for another load, where Too-Too was waiting for them at the "city" window with piles of mail, sorted out into boxes marked "Central," "West Central," "Southwest," etc., for the different parts of the town. This was another idea of Cheapside's, to divide up the city into districts, the same as they did in London, so the mail could be delivered quickly without too much hunting for streets.

Cheapside's help was, indeed, most valuable to the Doctor. The King himself said that the mails were wonderfully managed. The letters were brought regularly and never left at the wrong house.

He had only one fault, had Cheapside. And that was being cheeky. Whenever he got into an argument his Cockney swearing was just dreadful. And in spite of the Doctor's having issued orders time and time again that he expected his post office clerks and mail birds to be strictly polite to the public, Cheapside was always getting into rows—which he usually started himself.

One day when King Koko's pet white peacock came to the Doctor and complained that the Cockney sparrow had made faces at him over the palace wall the Doctor became quite angry and read the City Manager a long lecture.

Then Cheapside got together a gang of his tough London sparrow friends and one night they flew into the palace garden and mobbed the white peacock and pulled three feathers out of his beautiful tail.

This last piece of rowdyism was too much for John Dolittle and, calling up Cheapside, he discharged him on the spot—though he was very sorry to do it.

But when the sparrow went all his London friends went with him and the post office was left with no city birds to attend to the city deliveries. The swallows and other birds tried their hardest to get letters around to the houses properly. But they couldn't. And before long complaints began to come in from the townspeople.

Then the Doctor was sorry and wished he hadn't discharged Cheapside, who seemed to be the only one who could manage this part of the mails properly.

But one day, to the Doctor's great delight—though he tried hard to look angry—Cheapside strolled into the post office with a straw in the corner of his mouth, looking as though nothing had happened.

John Dolittle had thought that he and his friends had gone home to London. But they hadn't. They knew the Doctor would need them and they had just hung around outside the town. And then the Doctor, after lecturing Cheapside again about politeness, gave him back his job.

But the next day the rowdy little sparrow threw a bottle of post office ink over the royal white peacock when he came to the houseboat with the King to take tea. Then the Doctor discharged Cheapside again.

In fact, the Doctor used to discharge him for rudeness regularly about once a month. And the city mails always got tied up soon after. But, to the Doctor's great relief, the City Manager always came back just when the tie-up was at its worst and put things right again.

Cheapside was a wonderful bird. But it seemed as though he just couldn't go a whole month without being rude to somebody. The Doctor said it was in his nature.