hood. He
thought the matter well over as he leaned in the doorway of the
bathroom. He could, of course, have the room completely renovated--new
paper, new paint, and a fresh bath. Hot-water pipes! The geyser should
be done away with. Geysers were hideous, dangerous, and--pshaw, what
nonsense!--Ghostly! Ghostly! What absurd rot! How his wife would
laugh! That decided the question. His wife! She had expressed a very
ardent wish that he should take a house in or near Blythswood Square,
if he could get one on anything like reasonable terms, and here was
his chance. He would accompany the agent of the property to the
latter's office, and the preliminaries should be forthwith settled.

Six weeks later, he and his family were installed in the house, which
still reeked with the smell of fresh paint and paper. The first thing
the Captain did when he got there was to steal away slyly to the
bathroom, and as soon as he opened the door his heart sank. Despite
the many alterations the room had undergone, the grimness was still
there--there, everywhere. In the fine new six-foot bath, with its
glistening, gleaming, wooden framework; in the newly papered, newly
painted cupboard; in the walls, with their bright, fresh paper; in
the snowy surface of the whitewashed ceiling; in the air,--the very
air itself was full of it. The Captain was, as a rule, very fond of
his bath, but in his new quarters he firmly resolved that some one
else should use the bath before he made the experiment. In a very few
days the family had all settled down, and every one, with the
exception of the Captain, had had a bath, but no matter how many and
how bitter were his wife's complaints, try how he would, he could
not, he positively _could_ not, bring himself to wash in the
bathroom--_alone_. It was all right so long as the door was open, but
his wife resolutely refused to allow him to keep it open, and the
moment it was shut his abject terror returned--a terror produced by
nothing that he could in any way analyse or define. At last, ashamed
of his cowardice, he screwed up courage, and, with a look of
determined desperation in his eyes and mouth--an expression which
sent his wife into fits of laughter--set out one night from his
bedroom, candle in hand, and entered the bathroom. Shutting and
locking the door, he lighted another candle, and, after placing them
both on the mantelshelf, turned on the bath water, and began to
undress.

"I may as well have a peep