Volume Two—Chapter Two.
Chris Visits the Museum.
Racing did not agree with Chris Lisle, for the morning after his return from town he rose with a bad headache; and as he lived one of the most regular lives, he knew that it could not be caused by errors of diet. It would have been easy enough to have attributed it to the true cause—constant worry—but he was not going to own to that, as it seemed weak, so he set it down to his hair being too long.
“No wonder my head’s hot,” he said to himself; and, acting upon impulse, he hurried out of the room, and walked straight along the cliff road toward where, a few minutes before, Michael Wimble had had his head out of his door, looking for customers, after the fashion in which a magpie looks about for something to secrete.
He was a dry, yellow-looking man, thin, quick and sharp in action as the above-named bird, one to which his long nose and quick black eyes gave him no little resemblance; and this he enhanced by his habit of thrusting his head out of his door, laying his ear on his shoulder, and looking sidewise in one direction, then changing the motion by laying his other ear upon the fellow shoulder, and looking out in the opposite direction.
The Danmouth people, as a rule, always looked straight out to sea in a contemplative fashion, in search of something which might benefit them—fish, a ship in distress, flotsam and jetsam; but Michael Wimble looked for his benefits from the shore, and seldom gazed out to sea.
His place of business was called generally “the shop,” in spite of an oval board bearing upon it, in faded yellow letters upon a drab green ground, the word “Museum” as an attraction to any strangers who might visit the place, and be enticed by curiosity to see what the museum might contain, as well as by a printed notice pasted on each door-post, “Free admission.” Once within, they might become customers for shaving, haircutting, a peculiar yellow preparation which Michael Wimble called “pomehard,” or some of the sundries he kept in stock, which included walking-sticks, prawn nets, fishing lines, and white fish hooks, made of soft tinned iron, so that, if they caught in the rough rocky bottom, or some stem of extra tough seaweed, a good tug would pull them through it—bending without breaking—a great advantage and saving, so long as they did not behave in this way with a large fish.
Michael Wimble was very proud of his museum, and took pleasure in telling the seaside visitors that he had collected all his curiosities himself, and very much resented upon one occasion its being called a “Marine store” by a gentleman from town.