Bile salts give stool its characteristic brown color. If there is decreased bile flow caused by a condition affecting your gallbladder, liver, or pancreas (such as cholecystitis, gallstones, giardia, hepatitis, chronic pancreatitis, or cirrhosis), there may be a lack of bile in stool, making them pale or clay colored.
The writer uses irony in the passage with the sense of purposes to it. This purposes includes, criticizing the adults, to sympathize the children and also to create a tragic situation in the passage. Firstly, the writer uses the technique irony to criticize the adult.
In a general sense, irony is a rhetorical an literature device that is characterized by incongruity in the real situation and what is expected. The deliberate use of irony, especially in literary works and speeches, is used to emphasize a point.