Timothy rose slowly to his feet. There was a look of glum discontent on his face. It was evident that he was in nowise willing to obey his father's behest.
"What!" cried Peter, glancing at the lad with sharp reproof. "Dost object to the journey? Now, prithee, what wild boy's adventure hast thou on hand that is more to thy humour?"
Timothy looked dreamily out through the little latticed window towards the quay, and his eyes wandered for a time among the masts and riggings of the ships.
"I was but thinking to go out for a sail in Ambrose Pennington's fishing-boat," he said in a sulky undertone.
"A plague on your fishing-boats!" exclaimed Peter somewhat angrily. "Y'are for ever thinking of the sea and ships and all such mischievous inventions! I'll not have it, look you. And to-day, so please you, you'll do my bidding and go fetch me these herbs, and there's an end on't."
Timothy made no answer, for at this moment a hairy-faced mariner entered the shop, making a great noise upon the sanded floor with his heavy sea-boots.
"Give you good-morning, Master Whiddon," said Peter Trollope with a bow and a smile, as he offered the man a chair in the middle of the room. "What may be your honour's will?"
"Trim me my beard, Master Trollope," returned the seaman, seating himself in the chair and stretching out his legs in front of him; "and tell me your news; for 'tis a good two years since I was last ashore in Plymouth, and I am full eager, as you may be sure, to learn all that hath happened in my absence."
Timothy opened a little locker under the window and drew forth a large canvas wallet, which he strapped over his shoulder. Then he crossed over to a door and disappeared into an inner room behind the shop, leaving his father to attend to his customer and retail news that to the boy, at all events, was as stale as a last year's chestnut.
Peter Trollope was a barber-surgeon. He carried on his useful art (for in his deft hands it was in truth an art) at the sign of the Pestle and Mortar, down against Sutton Pool. He was a great man in Plymouth town, by reason of his entertaining talk and his skill alike in surgery and in hairdressing; and his little shop was the lounging-place of all the idle young gallants of the port, who came in to discuss the latest news from London, to gossip about their neighbours' affairs and about the ships, or to learn the tricks and fashions in the new art of taking tobacco. Men who had received sword-wounds in street frays or damaged skulls in tavern brawls came to him to have their hurts dressed and plastered; he had a famous tincture for the toothache, a certain remedy for melancholy, and at curing the common ailments of children and old women no doctor in the town could beat him. Mariners just home after a long voyage came to him to have their overgrown locks shorn and their beards singed. Poor workmen and apprentices came to him to be polled for twopence, were soon trimmed round as a cheese, and dismissed with a hearty "God speed you, my master!" There were many high and mighty gentlemen among his customers too, I do assure you; for he had starched the beard of the great Sir Walter Raleigh, curled the moustachios of brave Sir Francis Drake, and tied up the lovelocks of courtly Sir Anthony Killigrew.