The Adventures of a Brownie by Dinah Mulock

TILL the next time; but when there is a Brownie in the house, no one can say that any of his tricks will be the last. For there's no stopping a Brownie, and no getting rid of him either. This one had followed the family from house to house, generation after generation -- never any older, and sometimes seeming even to grow younger by the tricks he played. In fact, though he looked like an old man, he was a perpetual child.

To the children he never did any harm, quite the contrary. And his chief misdoings were against those who vexed the children. But he gradually made friends with several of his grown up enemies. Cook, for instance, who had ceased to be lazy at night and late in the morning, found no more black footmarks on her white table cloth. And Brownie found his basin of milk waiting for him, night after night, behind the coal-cellar door.