It was not exactly a hairdresser's; that is to say, people of a coarse and vulgar turn of mind might have called it a barber's; for they not only cut and curled ladies elegantly, and children carefully, but shaved gentlemen easily. Still, it was a highly genteel establishment--quite first-rate in fact--and there were displayed in the window, besides other elegancies, waxen busts of a light lady and a dark gentleman which were the admiration of the whole neighbourhood. Indeed, some ladies had gone so far as to assert, that the dark gentleman was actually a portrait of the spirted young proprietor;and the great similarity between their head-dresses--both wore very glossy hair, with a narrow walk straight down the middle, and a profusion of flat circular curls on both sides--encouraged the idea. The better informed among the ***, however, made light of this assertion, for however willing they were (and they were very willing) to do full justice to the handsome face and figure of the proprietor, they held the countenance of the dark gentleman in the window to be an exquisite and abstract idea of masculine beauty, realised sometimes, perhaps, among angles and military men, but very rarely embodied to gladden the eyes of mortals.
It was to this establishment that Newman Noggs led Miss Kenwigs in safety.
The proprietor, knowing that Miss Kenwigs had three sisters, each with two flaxen tails, and all good for sixpence apiece, once a month at least, promptly deserted an old gentleman whom he had just lathered for shaving, and handing him over to the journeyman, (who was not very popular among, the ladies, by reason of his obesity and middle age,) waited on the young lady himself.
Just as this change had been effected, there presented himself for shaving, a big, burly, good-humoured coal-heaver with a pipe in his mouth, who, drawing his hand across his chin, requested to know when a shaver would be disengaged.
The journeyman, to whom this question was put, looked doubtfully at the young proprietor, and the young proprietor looked scornfully at the coal-heaver: observing at the same time--`You won't get shaved here, my man.'
`Why not?' said the coal-heaver.
`We don't shave gentlemen in your line,' remarked the young proprietor.
`Why, I see you a shaving of a baker, when I was a looking through the winder, last week,' said the coal-heaver.
`It's necessary to draw the line somewheres, my fine feller,' replied the principal. `We draw the line there. We can't go beyond bakers. If we was to get any lower than bakers, our customers would desert us, and we might shut up shop. You must try some other establishment, sir. We couldn't do it here.'
The applicant stared; grinned at Newman Noggs, who appeared highly entertained;looked slightly round the shop, as if in depreciation of the pomatum pots and other articles of stock; took his pipe out of his mouth and gave a very loud whistle; and then put it in again, and walked out.
The old gentleman who had just been lathered, and who was sitting in a melancholy manner with his face turned towards the wall, appeared quite unconscious of this incident, and to be insensible to everything around him in the depth of a reverie--a very mournful one, to judge from the sighs he occasionally vented--in which he was absorbed. Affected by this example, the proprietor began to clip Miss Kenwigs, the journeyman to scrape the old gentleman, and Newman Noggs to read last Sunday's paper, all three in silence: when Miss Kenwigs uttered a shrill little scream, and Newman, raising his eyes, saw that it had been elicited by the circumstance of the old gentleman turning his head, and disclosing the features of Mr Lillyvick the collector.
The features of Mr Lillyvick they were, but strangely altered. If ever an old gentleman had made a point of appearing in public, shaved close and clean, that old gentleman was Mr Lillyvick. If ever a collector had borne himself like a collector, and assumed, before all men, a solemn and portentous dignity as if he had the world on his books and it was all two quarters in arrear, that collector was Mr Lillyvick. And now, there he sat, with the remains of a beard at least a week old encumbering his chin;a soiled and crumpled shirt-frill crouching, as it were, upon his breast, instead of standing boldly out; a demeanour so abashed and drooping, so despondent, and expressive of such humiliation, grief, and shame; that if the souls of forty unsubstantial housekeepers, all of whom had had their water cut off for non-payment of the rate, could have been concentrated in one body, that one body could hardly have expressed such mortification and defeat as were now expressed in the person of Mr Lillyvick the collector.
Newman Noggs uttered his name, and Mr Lillyvick groaned: then coughed to hide it. But the groan was a full-sized groan, and the cough was but a wheeze.
`Is anything the matter?' said Newman Noggs.
`Matter, sir!' cried Mr Lillyvick. `The plug of life is dry, sir, and but the mud is left.'
This speech--the style of which Newman attributed to Mr Lillyvick's recent association with theatrical characters--not being quite explanatory, Newman looked as if he were about to ask another question, when Mr Lillyvick prevented him by shaking his hand mournfully, and then waving his own.
`Let me be shaved!' said Mr Lillyvick. `It shall be done before Morleena--it is Morleena, isn't it?'
`Kenwigses said Newman.
`Kenwigses have got a boy, haven't they?' inquired the collector.
Again Newman said `Yes.'
`Is it a nice boy?' demanded the collector.
`It ain't very nasty one,' returned Newman, rather embarrassed by the question.
`Susan Kenwigs used to say,' observed the collector, `that if ever she had another boy, she hoped it might be like me. Is this one like me, Mr Noggs?'
This was a puzzling inquiry; but Newman evaded it, by replying to Mr Lillyvick, that he thought the baby might possibly come like him in time.