Chanticleer himself, though stalking on two stilt-like legs, with the dignity interminable descent in all his gestures, was hardly bigger than an ordinary partridge; his two wives were about the size of quails; and as for the one chicken, it looked small enough to be still in the egg, and, at the same time, sufficiently old, withered, wizened, and experienced to have been the founder of the antiquated race.
The "ancient and respectable fowls", like the Pyncheon family, have a long and noble lineage that is now desecrated: Nor must we forget to mention a hen-coop, of very reverend antiquity, that stood in the farther corner of the garden, not a great way from the fountain.
All of them were pure specimens of a breed which had been transmitted down as an heirloom in the Pyncheon family, and were said, while in their prime, to have attained almost the size of turkeys, and, on the score of delicate flesh, to be fit for a prince's table.
The distinguishing mark of the hens was a crest, of lamentably scanty growth, in these latter days, but so oddly and wickedly analogous to Hepzibah's turban, that Phoebe – to the poignant distress of her conscience, but inevitably – was led to fancy a general resemblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respectable relative.
While she curiously examined its hereditary marks – the peculiar speckle of its plumage, the funny tuft on its head, and a knob on each of its legs – the little biped, as she insisted, kept giving her a sagacious wink.