"I don't just know," said the Doctor. "I suppose because they're too costly. With any one of those pearls you could buy a house and garden."
"Well, wouldn't you like to keep them, then?" asked the spoonbill. "I could get the children something else to play with, no doubt."
"Oh, no," said the Doctor, "thank you. I have a house and garden."
"Yes, Doctor," Dab-Dab put in, "but you wouldn't be bound to buy a second one with the money you would get for the pearls. It would come in real handy for something else, you know."
"The baby spoonbills want them," said John Dolittle. "Why should I take them away from them?"
"Balls of pink putty would suit them just as well," snorted Dab-Dab.
"Putty is poisonous," said the Doctor. "They appreciate the beauty of the pearls. Let them have them. But," he added to the mother spoonbill, "if you know where any more are to be found I should be glad to know."
"I don't," said she. "I don't even know how these came to be in the possession of the oyster I ate."
"Pearls always grow in oysters—when they grow at all," said the Doctor. "But they are rare. This is the point that most interests me—the natural history of pearls. They are said to form around a grain of sand that gets into the oyster's shell by accident. I had hoped that if you were in the habit of eating oysters you could give me some information."
"I'm afraid I can't," said the spoonbill. "To tell you the truth, I got those oysters from a pile which some other bird had left on the rock here. He had eaten his fill, I suppose, and gone away. There are a good many left still. Let's go over to the pile and crack a few. Maybe they've all got pearls in them."