The sofy had begun it by scratchin' his face and he had scratched back with a shingle nail.
The album had watched its chance and, when he stood beneath it, had jumped off a shelf on to his head.

Suddenly he heard a voice calling him: "Little boy, come here," it said, and it was the voice of the what-not.
"Just step up on this lower shelf," says the old what-not.

"I want to show ye somethin'." The what-not was all covered with shiny things and looked as innocent as a lamb.
He went over and stepped on the lower shelf and then the savage thing jumped right on top of him, very supple, and threw him on to the floor and held him there until his mother came.
I dreamed that night that a long-legged what-not, with a wax wreath in its hands, chased me around the house and caught and bit me on the neck.
I called for help and uncle came and found me on the floor and put me back in bed again.
For a long time I thought that the way a man punished a boy was by thumping his bed.

I knew that women had a different and less satisfactory method, for I remembered that my mother had spanked me and Aunt Deel had a way of giving my hands and head a kind of watermelon thump with the middle finger of her right hand and with a curious look in her eyes.

Uncle Peabody used to call it a "snaptious look." Almost always he whacked the bed with his slipper.