Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens
Page: 33

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