THE GHOST IN MASTER B'S ROOM

IT being now my own turn, I "took the word" as the French say, and went on:

When I established myself in the triangular
garret which had gained so distinguished a
reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to
Master B. My speculations about him were
uneasy and manifold. Whether his Christian
name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having
been born in Leap Year), Bartholomew, or Bill.
Whether the initial letter belonged to his family
name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, Barker,
Buggins, Baker, or Bird. Whether he was a
foundling, and had been baptized B. Whether
he was a lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for
Briton, or for Bull. Whether he could possibly
have been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who
brightened my own childhood, and had come of
the blood of the brilliant Mother Bunch?

With these profitless meditations I tormented
myself much. I also carried the mysterious
letter into the appearance and pursuits of the
deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue,
wore Boots (he couldn't have been Bald), was
a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good at
Bowling, had any skill as a Boxer, ever in his
Buoyant Boyhood Bathed from a Bathing-
machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth,
Brighton, or Broadstairs, like a Bounding
Billiard Ball?

So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.

It was not long before I remarked that I never
by any hazard had a dream of Master B., or of
anything belonging to him. But, the instant I
awoke from sleep, at whatever hour of the night,
my thoughts took him up, and roamed away,
trying to attach his initial letter to something
that would fit it and keep it quiet.

For six nights, I had been worried thus in
Master B.'s room, when I began to perceive that
things were going wrong.

The first appearance that presented itself was
early in the morning, when it was but just
daylight and no more. I was standing shaving at
my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my
consternation and amazement, that I was shaving
—not myself—I am fifty—but a boy. Apparently
Master B.?

I trembled and looked over my shoulder;
nothing there. I looked again in the glass, and
distinctly saw the features and expression of a
boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard,
but to get one. Extremely troubled in my mind,
I took a few turns in the room, and went back
to the looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand
and complete the operation in which I had been
disturbed. Opening my eyes, which I had shut
while recovering my firmness, I now met in the
glass, looking straight at me, the eyes of a young
man of four or five and twenty. Terrified by this
new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made a strong
effort to recover myself. Opening them again, I
saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father,
who has long been dead. Nay, I even saw my
grandfather too, whom I never did see in my life.

Although naturally much affected by these
remarkable visitations, I determined to keep my
secret, until the time agreed upon for the present
general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of
curious thoughts, I retired to my room, that
night, prepared to encounter some new
experience of a spectral character. Nor was my
preparation needless, for, waking from an uneasy
sleep at exactly two o'clock in the morning,
what were my feelings to find that I was sharing
my bed, with the skeleton of Master B.!

I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also.
I then heard a plaintive voice saying, "Where
am I? What is become of me?" and, looking
hard in that direction, perceived the ghost of
Master B.

The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete
fashion: or rather, was not so much dressed as put
into a case of inferior pepper-and-salt cloth, made
horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed
that these buttons went, in a double row, over
each shoulder of the young ghost, and appeared
to descend his back. He wore a frill round his
neck. His right hand (which I distinctly
noticed to be inky) was laid upon his stomach;
connecting this action with some feeble
pimples on his countenance, and his general air of
nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost
of a boy who had habitually taken a great deal
too much medicine.

"Where am I?" said the little spectre, in a
pathetic voice. "And why was I born in the
Calomel days, and why did I have all that
Calomel given me?"

I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon
my soul I couldn't tell him.

"Where is my little sister," said the ghost,
"and where my angelic little wife, and where is
the boy I went to school with?"

I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and
above all things to take heart respecting the loss
of the boy he went to school with. I
represented to him that probably that boy never did,
within human experience, come out well, when
discovered. I urged that I myself had, in later
life, turned up several boys whom I went to
school with, and none of them had at all
answered. I expressed my humble belief that that
boy never did answer. I represented that he was
a mythic character, a delusion, and a snare. I
recounted how, the last time I found him, I
found him at a dinner party behind a wall of
white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on
every possible subject, and a power of silent
boredom absolutely Titanic. I related how, on
the strength of our having been together at
"Old Doylance's," he had asked himself to breakfast
with me (a social offence of the largest
magnitude); how, fanning my weak embers of
belief in Doylance's boys, I had let him in; and
how, he had proved to be a fearful wanderer about
the earth, pursuing the race of Adam with