All the principal streets and squares, and every decent shop that Hanbridge competition had left standing, and many private houses, now lighted themselves by electricity, and the result was splendid and glaring and coldly yellow.  Mr. Blackshaw developed into the hero of the hour.  People looked at him in the street as though he had been the discoverer and original maker of electricity.  And if the manager of the gasworks had not already committed murder, it was because the manager of the gasworks had a right sense of what was due to his position as vicar’s churchwarden at St Peter’s Church.

But greatness has its penalties.  And the chief penalty of Mr Blackshaw’s greatness was that he could not see Roger have his nightly bath.  It was impossible for Mr Blackshaw to quit his arduous and responsible post before seven o’clock in the evening.  Later on, when things were going more smoothly, he might be able to get away; but then, later on, his son’s bath would not be so amusing and agreeable as it then, by all reports, was.  The baby was, of course, bathed on Saturday nights, but Sunday afternoon and evening Mr Blackshaw was obliged to spend with his invalid mother at Longshaw.  It was on the sole condition of his weekly presence thus in her house that she had consented not to live with the married pair.  And so Mr Blackshaw could not witness Roger’s bath.  He adored Roger.  He understood Roger.  He weighed, nursed, and fed Roger.  He was ‘up’ in all the newest theories of infant rearing.  In short, Roger was his passion, and he knew everything of Roger except Roger’s bath.  And when his wife met him at the front door of a night at seven-thirty and launched instantly into a description of the wonders, delights, and excitations of Roger’s latest bath, Mr Blackshaw was ready to tear his hair with disappointment and frustration.

’I suppose you couldn’t put it off for a couple of hours one night, May?’ he suggested at supper on the evening of the particular bath described above.

‘Sidney!’ protested Mrs Blackshaw, pained.

Mr Blackshaw felt that he had gone too far, and there was a silence.

‘Well!’ said Mr Blackshaw at length, ’I have just made up my mind.  I’m going to see that Kid’s bath, and, what’s more, I’m going to see it tomorrow.  I don’t care what happens.’

‘But how shall you manage to get away, darling?’

’You will telephone me about a quarter of an hour before you’re ready to begin, and I’ll pretend it’s something very urgent, and scoot off.’

‘Well, that will be lovely, darling!’ said Mrs Blackshaw.  ’I would like you to see him in the bath, just once!  He looks so—­’

And so on.

The next day, Mr Blackshaw, that fearsome autocrat of the Municipal Electricity Works, was saying to himself all day that at five o’clock he was going to assist at the spectacle of his wonderful son’s bath.  The prospect inspired him.  So much so that every hand on the place was doing its utmost in fear and trembling, and the whole affair was running with the precision and smoothness of a watch.