Plum Punch: Life at Home

The Thin End of the Wedge “I beg you,” said the Headless Man with some agitation, “not to dream of doing such a thing. Of course, if you think that I am unequal to the work——” he added rather stiffly.

“My dear Sir,” I replied, “not at all. Not at all. What a notion! I am sure there is not a spectre on the list who could do it half so well, and what the Haunted Mill would be without you I don’t care to think.”

“Then why wish to employ another ghost?”

“I thought you would like a companion. It must be lonely for you here when I am away.”

“I miss you, of course, as who would not?” replied the Headless Man in his charming way. “But I prefer solitude to the company of another ghost. Take my advice, Mr. WUDDUS. Dismiss the idea of increasing your establishment.”

The trouble was this. My old friend Lord SANGAZURE, finding it necessary, owing to the expenses connected with the marriage of his eldest daughter, to retrench, had resolved to dismiss one of his staff of spectres, a luminous boy of excellent character and obliging disposition. Wishing to procure him a comfortable home in exchange for the luxury of Sangazure Towers he had written to me, suggesting that I should enrol him as a member of my household. “You must want a ghost,” he had said, having evidently forgotten that I already employed a Headless Man.

I felt a delicacy in adding to my establishment without the approval of the Headless Man, so I had told him of Lord SANGAZURE’S proposal, which, as I have shown, he had unhesitatingly condemned.

“Dismiss the idea,” he said again. “I have a great respect—and I may say liking—for you, Mr. WUDDUS” (here he brushed away the not unmanly tear), “and I should not care to see you suffer the same fate as Mr. MOSENSTEIN.”

“What was that?” I inquired; “I don’t think I ever heard that story.”

“Ah, then I will tell it to you. You will find it extremely relevant to the case in point. This Mr. MOSENSTEIN was a ‘pig in clover,’ who, by dint of rigging the market, had risen from comparatively decent obscurity to the possession of several millions of pounds. His first act was to ensure himself a sufficiency of congenial society by settling in Park Lane, his second to look for a good house in the country. He hit upon Blenkinsop Manor, the seat of Lord BLENKINSOP, an amiable old gentleman who, through a tendency on the part of his sons to marry music-hall artistes instead of American heiresses, had been reduced to a genteel poverty. Lord BLENKINSOP closed with his munificent offer, and Mr. MOSENSTEIN took possession.