CHAPTER VII
In Which Master Mustardseed Tells His Story
“In a mean, dingy house in the midst of a great city, there once lived a cobbler and his apprentice, and together with them in that same house there also lived a certain evil and malicious boggart. Now a boggart is just the opposite of a brownie, for while a brownie tidies and sweeps and puts things to rights, a boggart only works mischief and makes confusion. He would break the crockery, and mislay the tools in the workshop, and once he dropped so much salt into the soup that the cobbler lay awake half the night with thirst. Now the cobbler, who was a harsh, unreasonable man, suspected his apprentice of these pranks, and soon took him roughly to task.
“Master,” said the apprentice, “you do me wrong. It is not I who have done you t
