"A waterproof?"

"Or a railway rug--I forget which: the moral is the same."

"Well, what is a ghost?"

"A ghost is nothing--an airy nothing manufactured by your own disordered
senses of your own over-excited brain."

"I beg to observe that I never saw a ghost in my life."

"I am glad to hear it. It does you credit. If ever any one had an excuse
for seeing a ghost it would be a man whose spine was jarred. But I meant
nothing personal by the pronoun--only to give greater force to my
remarks. The first person singular will do instead. The ghost belongs to
the same lot, as the faces that make mouths at me when I have
brain-fever, the reptiles that crawl about when I have an attack of the
D.T., or--to take a more familiar example--the spots I see floating
before my eyes when my liver is out of order. You will allow there is
nothing supernatural in all that?"

"Certainly. Though, did not that pretty niece of Mrs. Molyneux's say she
used to see those spots floating before her eyes when a misfortune was
impending?"

"I fancy she did, and true enough too, as such spots would very likely
precede a bilious attack, which is misfortune enough while it lasts. But
still, even Mrs. Molyneux's niece, even Mrs. Molyneux herself, would
not say the fever faces, or the reptiles, or the spots, were