“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 pin-feathers 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 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.
“Oh, dreadful!—can it be possible?” shrieked both parents. “Can anything be done?”
“Well, I should recommend a daily lotion made of mosquitoes’ horns and bicarbonate of frogs’ toes together with a powder, to be taken morning and night, of muriate of fleas. One thing you must be careful about: they must never wet their feet, nor drink any water.”
“Dear me, Doctor, I don’t know what I shall do, for they seem to have a particular fancy for getting into water.”
“Yes, a morbid tendency often found in these cases of bony tumification of the vascular tissue of the mouth; but you must resist it, ma’am, as their life depends upon it.” And with that Doctor Peppercorn glared gloomily on the young ducks, who were stealthily poking the objectionable little spoon-bills out from under their mothers’ feathers.