Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/210

190 on the right side. I wish it to be parted at the back. I wish it not to be parted at the back. I wish the whiskers to be trimmed. I wish the whiskers not to be touched. I wish you to shampoo me. I do not wish you to shampoo me. You may put some grease to my hair. I desire that you do not put any wash to my head. I hope your brushes are clean. Have you a clean comb? Can you supply me with cosmetics, fancy-soaps, tooth-brushes, bandoline, pomades, hair-oil, combs, hair-pins, curling-tongs, hair-brushes, shaving-cream, razors, scent, and articles for the toilette?"

But, Mr. Bouncer was not provided with a copy of such a work as this—which, it may be presumed, would be published by the Society for the Confusion of Useless Knowledge, and, therefore, he was cut off from the possibility of chattering to the hairdresser in his native French—as pronounced at Stratford-at-Bowe—which, perhaps, was not of much consequence; for, unless the hairdresser had replied in the words, and with the accent, set down for him in the Guide, Mr. Bouncer would have been left all abroad in the conversation.

As it was, both he and Mossoo kept silence; and, as he held the "Journal" of an unknown tongue in his hands, he could not but reflect how very unlike this Parisian hairdresser of "the little village" was to the barber of Barham.

French taste reigned around him, and French sights and sounds met his ears and eyes.

A few hours since he was in Mr. Quickfall's unmistakably English shop at Barham, and now he might have been in the heart of Paris for all that he could see or hear to the contrary.

A young and fashionably dressed woman was standing