Nancy kept him sternly out of the kitchen, for he was terribly mischievous, and seemed to take a positive delight in playing practical jokes. He had purloined David's scarf from the saddle-room, and dropped it into the horse-trough, had filled Bobby's hat with pebbles, and devoured the queen-cakes which Lilian had placed on the kitchen window-sill to cool; he had snatched Joe's breast-pin--a glittering imitation diamond--from his Sunday tie, under the very nose of that injured youth, and had stolen so many small articles that if anything were missing the children would have a grand search for Master Jack's hiding-place, and would generally turn out the lost treasure from among an odd collection of trifles--scraps of bright-coloured rags, bits of broken glass, hairpins, pen-nibs, pencil-ends, together with pieces of bread and half-picked bones which the thief had concealed in some cunning corner inside a manger or under the roof of the loft.