ever, it was reduced to something like order, to the immense
satisfaction of Mrs Roby and the Captain.

"Now," said the latter, "did you ever have a Turkish bath?"

"No--never."

"Well, then, come with me and have one. Have you got a cap?"

"Hm--never mind, come along; you're not cleaned up yet by a long way;
but we'll manage it in course of time."

As the Captain and his small _protege_ passed along the streets, the
former took occasion to explain that a Turkish bath was a species of
mild torture, in which a man was stewed alive, and baked in an oven, and
par-boiled, and scrubbed, and pinched, and thumped (sometimes black and
blue), and lathered with soap till he couldn't see, and heated up to
seven thousand and ten, Fahrenheit and soused with half-boiling water,
and shot at with cold water--or shot into it, as the case might be--and
rolled in a sheet like a mummy, and stretched out a like corpse to cool.
"Most men," he said, "felt gaspy in Turkish baths, and weak ones were
alarmed lest they should get suffocated beyond recovery; but strong men
rather enjoy themselves in 'em than otherwise."

"Hah!" exclaimed the imp, "may I wentur' to ax, Capp'n, wot's the effect
on _boys_?"

To this the Captain replied that he didn't exactly know, never having
heard of boys taking Turkish baths. Whereupon Gillie suggested, that if
possible he might have himself cleaned in an ordinary bath.

"Impossible, my lad," said the Captain, decidedly. "No or'nary bath
would clean you under a week, unless black soap and scrubbin' brushes
was used.

"But don't be alarmed, Gillie," he added, looking down with a twinkle in
his eyes, "I'll go into the bath along with you. We'll sink or swim
together, my boy, and I'll see that you're not overdone. I'm rather
fond of them myself, d'ee see, so I can recommend 'em from experience."

Somewhat reassured by this, though still a little uneasy in his mind,
the imp followed his patron to the baths.

It would have been a sight worth seeing, the entrance of these two into
the temple of soap-and-water. To see Gillie's well-made, but very
meagre and dirty little limbs unrobed; to see him decked out with the
scrimpest possible little kilt, such as would, perhaps, have suited the
fancy of a Fiji islander; to see his gaze of undisguised admiration on
beholding his companion's towering and massive frame in the same
unwonted costume, if we may so style it; to see the intensifying of his
astonishment