Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/197

Rh Roosher, sir?" To which the old bear sulkily replies, "Don't chatter, sir; but dress my hair." And, further, he called to mind the old anecdote how a person in his position had repeatedly said to the loquacious barber, "Do cut it short!" until the barber, accepting the adjuration as applied not to his own narrative, but to his customer's hair, replied, "I don't think it can be cut shorter, sir; for there is no more hair to cut." Pondering on this anecdote, Mr. Bouncer thought it wiser to hold his tongue, and to sit, like Patience on the oilcloth, while Mr. Quickfall harangued him.

It seemed as though the barber of Barham might have said, "Bid me discourse; I will enchant thine ear;" for he, evidently, must have entertained a strong impression of his own capability for a monologue entertainment. Something that he had said in reference to an anonymous letter that had been forwarded to him in connection with that terrible Tarver business, and which letter Mr. Quickfall denounced as an impudent forgery, reminded him of an episode in his younger years, which, as a matter of course, Mr. Quickfall very leisurely narrated, the while he made a full pause in the operations on Mr. Bouncer's head.

"It was while I was apprentice to Hopkins, late Nicholson, in London, that I was sent for to cut a party at his own private house. A very pleasant and respectable party he was, with a handsome face, bold features and a fine physic." By which Mr. Quickfall meant physique. "Most affable he was in his conversation, and he asked me what I had heard about the reports that were afloat concerning Marsh and Stracey's bank in Berners Street. I told him all that I knew, which was not of the best; but, he seemed to think that it would