After this poor Mrs. Feathertop led a weary life of it; for the young fry were as healthy and enterprising a brood of young ducks as ever carried saucepans on the end of their noses, and they most utterly set themselves against the doctor’s prescriptions, murmured at the muriate of fleas and the bicarbonate of frogs’ toes and took every opportunity to waddle their little ways down to the mud and water which was in their near vicinity. So their bills grew larger and larger, as did the rest of their bodies, and family government grew weaker and weaker.
“You’ll wear me out children, you certainly will,” said poor Mrs. Feathertop.
“You’ll go to destruction, do ye hear?” said Master Gray Cock.
“Did you ever see such frights as poor Mrs. Feathertop has got?” said Dame Scratchard. “I knew what would come of her family—all deformed, and with a dreadful sort of madness, which makes them love to shovel mud with those shocking spoon-bills of theirs.”
“they must never wet their feet, nor drink any water,” said the doctor
“It’s a kind of idiocy,” said Goody Kertarkut. “Poor things! they can’t be kept from the water, nor made to take powders, and so they got worse and worse.”
“I understand it’s affecting their feet so that they can’t walk, and a dreadful sort of net is growing between their toes; what a shocking visitation!”
“She brought it on herself,” said Dame Scratchard. “Why didn’t she come to me before she set? She was always an upstart, self-conceited thing, but I’m sure I pity her.”