“I am in haste, sir,” said Gray, drumming with his fingers upon the counter.
“Certainly, sir. Business is business—wigs are wigs now-a-days. Here’s one, sir, that will fit you to a miracle—your sized head, sir, is what we call number six. That’s a wig, sir, that’s a credit to me and will be a credit to you, sir.”
Jacob Gray took the wig, and fitting it on his head, looked at himself attentively in a glass.
“I think this will do,” he said, as he remarked with satisfaction the alteration it made in his aspect.
“You look wonderfully well in that wig, sir—upon my word you do,” said the barber. “I could not have believed it, sir. You look twenty-two years and a quarter younger, sir.”
“Pshaw,” said Gray. “The wig will do, I have little doubt.”
“No doubt whatever, sir—not a small shadow of a doubt. You look uncommonly well, sir in that wig. ‘So I do in anything,’ says you—but a wig is a wig, you know, and when—”
“Peace—peace,” said Gray. “The price?”
“The price, sir; why I should call that wig uncommonly cheap at two guineas, sir.”
“There,” said Gray, throwing the required amount upon the counter, and then immediately walked out of the shop of the loquacious perruquier.