The Doctor now, laughingly leaving his disorder to take care of itself, resumed his place on the stool; that the furniture of his head might go through its proper repairs.
Mr. Garrick then, assuming a solemn gravity, with a profound air of attention, fastened his eyes upon the hair-dresser; as if wonder-struck at his amazing skill in decorating the Doctor’s tête.
The man, highly gratified by such notice from the celebrated Garrick, briskly worked on, frizzing, curling, powdering, and pasting, according to the mode of the day, with assiduous, though flurried importance, and with marked self-complacency.
Mr. Garrick himself had on what he called his scratch wig; which was so uncommonly ill-arranged and frightful, that the whole family agreed no one else could have appeared in such a plight in the public streets, without a risk of being hooted at by the mob.
He dropt now all parley whatsoever with the Doctor, not even answering what he said; and seemed wholly absorbed in admiring watchfulness of the progress of the hair-dresser; putting on, by degrees, with a power like transformation, a little mean face of envy and sadness, such as he wore in representing Abel Drugger; which so indescribably altered his countenance, as to make his young admirers almost mingle incredulity of his individuality with their surprise and amusement; for, with his mouth hanging stupidly open, he fixed his features in so vacant an absence of all expression, that he less resembled himself than some daubed wooden block in a barber’s shop window.
The Doctor, perceiving the metamorphosis, smiled in silent observance. But the friseur, who at first had smirkingly felt flattered at seeing his operations thus curiously remarked, became utterly discountenanced by so incomprehensible a change, and so unremitting a stare; and hardly knew what he was about. The more, however, he pomatumed and powdered, and twisted the Doctor’s curls, the more palpable were the signs that Mr. Garrick manifested of
“Wonder with a foolish face of praise;”
till, little by little, a species of consternation began to mingle with the embarrassment of the hair-manufacturer. Mr. Garrick then, suddenly starting up, gawkily perked his altered physiognomy, with the look of a gaping idiot, full in the man’s face.
Scared and confounded, the perruquier now turned away his eyes, and hastily rolled up two curls, with all the speed in his power, to make his retreat. But before he was suffered to escape, Mr. Garrick, lifting his own miserable scratch from his head, and perching it high up in the air upon his finger and thumb, dolorously, in a whining voice, squeaked out, “Pray now, Sir, do you think, Sir, you could touch me up this here old bob a little bit, Sir?”
The man now, with open eyes, and a broad grin, scampered pell-mell out of the room; hardly able to shut the door, ere an uncontrollable horse-laugh proclaimed his relieved perception of Mr. Garrick’s mystification.