Sometimes, however,
he would behave himself kindly. The cream was then churned, and the pans
and kettles scoured without hands. There was one circumstance which was
remarkable;--the stairs ascended from the kitchen, a partition of boards
covered the ends of the steps, and formed a closet beneath the
staircase. From one of the boards of this partition a large round knot
was accidentally displaced; and one day the youngest of the children,
while playing with the shoe-horn, stuck it into this knot-hole. Whether
or not the aperture had been formed by the Boggart as a peep-hole to
watch the motions of the family, I cannot pretend to say. Some thought
it was, for it was called the Boggart's peep-hole; but others said that
they had remembered it long before the shrill laugh of the Boggart was
heard in the house. However this may have been, it is certain that the
horn was ejected with surprising precision at the head of whoever put it
there; and either in mirth or in anger the horn was darted forth with
great velocity, and struck the poor child over the ear.
There are few matters upon which parents feel more acutely than that of
the maltreatment of their offspring; but time, that great soother of all
things, at length familiarised this dangerous occurrence to every one at
the farm, and that which at the first was regarded with the utmost
terror, became a kind of amusement with the more thoughtless and daring
of the family.
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