, although my friend is a dressy man.

"You see," he explained, "I dare not use it more than I can help. I am
a clumsy chap, and as likely as not, if I happened to be in a hurry, I'd
have the whole thing over:" which seemed probable.

I asked him how he contrived. "I dress in the bath-room as a rule," he
replied; "I keep most of my things there. Of course the old boy doesn't
know."

He showed me a chest of drawers. One drawer stood half open.

"I'm bound to leave that drawer open," he said; "I keep the things I use
in that. They don't shut quite easily, these drawers; or rather, they
shut all right, but then they won't open. It is the weather, I think.
They will open and shut all right in the summer, I dare say." He is of a
hopeful disposition.

But the pride of the room was the washstand.

"What do you think of this?" cried he enthusiastically, "real marble
top--"

He did not expatiate further. In his excitement he had laid his hand
upon the thing, with the natural result that it collapsed. More by
accident than design I caught the jug in my arms. I also caught the
water it contained. The basin rolled on its edge and little damage was
done, except to me and the soap-box.

I could not pump up much admiration for this washstand; I was feeling
too wet.

"What do you do when you want to wash?" I asked, as together we reset
the trap.

There fell upon him the manner of a conspirator revealing secrets. He
glanced guiltily round the room; then, creeping on tip-toe, he opened a
cupboard behind the bed. Within was a tin basin and a small can.

"Don't tell the old boy," he said. "I keep these things here, and wash
on the floor."

That was the best thing I myself ever got out of egg-boxes--that picture
of a deceitful son stealthily washing himself upon the floor behind the
bed, trembling at every footstep lest it might be the "old boy" coming
to the door.

One wonders whether the Ten Commandments are so all-sufficient as we
good folk deem them--whether the eleventh is not worth the whole pack
of them: "that ye love one another" with just a common-place, human,
practical love. Could not the other ten be comfortably stowed away into
a corner of that! One is inclined, in one's anarchic moments, to agree
with Louis Stevenson, that to be amiable and cheerful is a good religion
for a work-a-day world. We are so busy NOT killing, NOT stealing, NOT
coveting our neighbour's wife, we have not time to be even just to
one an