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, the journeyman to scrape the old gentleman, and Newman Noggs to read last Sunday's paper, all three in silence; when Miss Kenwis uttered a shrill little scream, and Newman raising his eyes, saw that it had been elicited by the circumstance of the old gentleman turning his head, and disclosing the features of Mr. Lillyvick the collector.
The features of Mr. Lillyvick they were, but strangely altered. If ever an old gentleman had made a point of appearing in public, shaved close and clean, that old gentleman was Mr. Lillyvick. If ever a collector had borne himself like a collector, and assumed before all men a solemn and portentous dignity as if he had the world on his books and it was all two quarters in arrear, that collector was Mr. Lillyvick. And now, there he sat with the remains of a beard at least a week old encumbering his chin, a soiled and crumpled shirt-frill crouching as it were upon his breast instead of standing boldly out; a demeanour so abashed and drooping, so despondent, expressive of such humiliation, grief, and shame, that if the souls of forty unsubstantial housekeepers all of whom had had their water cut off for non-payment of the rate, could have been concentrated in one body, that one body could hardly have expressed such mortification and defeat as were now expressed in the person of Mr. Lillyvick the collector.
Newman Noggs uttered his name, and Mr. Lillyvick groaned, then coughed to hide it. But the groan was a full-sized groan, and the cough was but a wheeze.
"Is anything the matter?" said Newman Noggs.
"Matter, Sir!" cried Mr. Lillyvick. "The plug of life is dry, Sir, and but the mud is left."
This speech—the style of which Newman attributed to Mr. Lillyvick's recent association with theatrical characters—not being quite explanatory, Newman looked as if he were about to ask another question, when Mr. Lillyvick prevented him by shaking his hand mournfully, and then waving his own.
"Let me be shaved," said Mr. Lillyvick. "I shall be done before Morleena—it is Morleena, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Newman.
"Kenwigses have got a boy, haven't they?" inquired the collector.
Again Newman said "Yes."
"Is it a nice boy?" demanded the collector.
"It ain't a very nasty one," returned Newman, rather embarrassed by the question.
