At first he confined his new plague to the servants at the Cottage.
The cook was one day turning out a drawer in the kitchen dresser, when
she was horrified out of her senses to find squatting there, a large,
black toad, which stared most malevolently at her, and then sprang in
her face. She shrieked to the housemaid to help her kill it, but
before a weapon could be got, the creature had bounced through an open
window, and disappeared.
After this incident the servants knew no peace. Their bedclothes were
thrown off them at night, their dresses torn and bespattered with ink,
their brushes and combs thrown out of the window, and the water they
poured out to wash in was sometimes quite black, sometimes full of a
bright green sediment, and sometimes boiling, when it invariably
cracked both the jug and basin.
Unable to stand these annoyances the servants left in a body. Their
successors fared the same, and worse. Besides having to endure the
above-named horrors, pebbles were thrown through the windows, their
chairs were pulled away as they were about to sit down (the cook, who
was one of those upon whom this trick was played, thereby seriously
injuring her spine), and all sorts of obstacles were placed on the
stairs, so that those who ran down unwarily tripped over them and hurt
themselves (two successive housemaids broke their legs, whilst another
sprained her wrist).
The meat, too, was a constant worry--it went so bad that enormous
maggots crawled out of it by the thousand and covered the table and
floor; and the milk, of which a large quantity was taken daily,
"turned" in a very curious manner.
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