"The royal peacock complained that Cheapside had made faces at him"
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.