Page:Nicholas Nickleby.djvu/605

Rh refused, than it would let me submit to see my children trampled down and trod upon by envy and lowness!"

Newman was too good-natured not to have consented, even without this avowal of confidence on the part of Mrs. Kenwigs. Accordingly, a very few minutes had elapsed when he and Miss Morleena were on their way to the hair-dresser's.

It was not exactly a hair-dresser'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 spirited 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 sex, 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 angels 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, and the proprietor knowing that Miss Kenwigs had three sisters, each with two flaxen tails, and all good for sixpence a-piece 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."