y 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. 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