The Boggart and the Monster Read Online Free PDF Page B

resist them. Look at this!”
He pressed lightly on the fragile-looking tent frame, and it sprang open into the inverted bowl shape of a little igloo, bright orange, floor and roofall in one piece, with zippered screens and flaps for windows and doors.
    â€œLook at it! No more hammering tent pegs in the rain, nothing but a quick zip.”
He zipped up the door-piece and all the windows, and beamed at them.
    Unfortunately he had also zipped up the Boggart, whose limitless curiosity had sent him flittering happily after them into the storage room. Caught in the little tent, he danced about in momentary confusion, and the tent rose into the air like an orange mushroom cap, bouncing off ceiling and walls. The children and Mr. Maconochie were startled only for the first moment; then they grinned, and turned their attention to dodging.
“It’s a tent, Boggart, not a basketball!”
Jessup called cheerfully, ducking as the tent zoomed past his head.
    Inside the tent, the Boggart found a gap at the very end of a zipper, and poured himself out through it like water, invisible, greatly relieved. The tent subsided to the floor, and he eyed it resentfully, vowing never to go near anything like it again.
    Tommy gingerly unzipped the orange door, and they all waited cautiously to see what the Boggart might do when he came out. But the Boggart was by then already down in the kitchen, sulking a little, sniffing to find out what might be available for supper.
    *  *  *
    E VERYTHING THAT HAPPENED afterward could have been traced, perhaps, to Mr. Maconochie’s whisky. They hadeaten their supper and washed the dishes; Tommy had gone home in his little puttering boat, and now Emily and Jessup sat with Mr. Maconochie beside the fire in the living room, talking about the Boggart’s escapades in Toronto two years before. Mr. Maconochie loved hearing about the Boggart. Now that he had discovered the existence of boggarts in general, he felt he had wandered into an entirely different world, whose details he had to learn as a child learns to walk and talk. He was proud of one personal achievement: he had already taught the Boggart to love French fries, known to him and everyone else in the British Isles as chips.
    When he retired from the law and moved to Castle Keep, Mr. Maconochie, who in all his life had hardly even boiled an egg, had deliberately set out to learn how to cook. After a long talk with his housekeeper, an elderly, stout Scotswoman who was now herself retiring to live with her niece in Aberdeen, he had persuaded the startled lady to give him lessons in basic cooking. A month later he had a shopping spree in an Edinburgh store frequented mainly by professional chefs, and bought a lifetime supply of shiny pots and pans and ladles and knives. He also accumulated a whole shelf full of cookbooks, which he now read regularly for fun, as most adults read thrillers.
    He learned to cook a wide range of dishes, especially those dear to his great-nephews, and he gained six pounds. He was particularly fond of the dinner he had cooked this evening for Emily, Jessup and Tommy: country-style lamb-burgers, made with ground lambdeliciously laced with finely-chopped sautéed onion, green pepper and parsley, accompanied by green peas, with potatoes cut into chips and deep-fried to a wonderful crispness.
    Emily and Jessup watched in awe as Mr. Maconochie, wrapped in a white chef’s apron, whisked his wire basket of sizzling chips out of the deep fat at precisely the right moment. Their mother, Maggie, had attempted deep-frying only once in recorded history, and they had had to call the fire department because the fat had gone up in flames and set fire to the kitchen curtains.
    The Boggart hovered near the table as they ate, and stole chips from each plate in turn with his long invisible fingers. He chewed with lingering pleasure and tried not to burp, and the children tried not to notice whenever a particularly long