"Well, but bless me, what's the matter with their bills?" said Dame Scratchard. "Why, my dear, these chicks are deformed! I'm sorry for you, my dear, but it's all the result of your inexperience; you ought to have eaten pebble-stones with your meal when you were setting. Don't you see, Dame Kertarkut, what bills they have? That'll increase, and they'll be frightful!"
"What shall I do?" said Mrs. Feathertop, now greatly alarmed.
"Nothing as I know of," said Dame Scratchard, "since you didn't come to me before you set. I could have told you all about it. Maybe it won't kill 'em, but they'll always be deformed."
And so the gossips departed, leaving a sting under the pinfeathers of the poor little hen mamma, who began to see that her darlings had curious little spoon-bills different from her own, and to worry and fret about it.
"My dear," she said to her spouse, "do get Doctor Peppercorn to to come in and look at their bills, and see if anything can be done."
Doctor Peppercorn came in, and put on a monstrous pair of spectacles, and said, "Hum! Ha! Extraordinary case,—very singular!"
"Did you ever see anything like it, Doctor?" said both parents, in a breath.
"I've read of such cases. It's a calcareous enlargement of the vascular bony tissue, threatening ossification," said the Doctor.
"O, dreadful!—can it be possible?" shrieked both parents. "Can anything be done?"