But it was not so this evening.
The shop was crowded. Copies of the "Extra" were being read by men
waiting, and by men in the latter stages of treatment. "Extras" lay
upon vacant seats and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened
the door. His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering
of a firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men
turned their prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of
amazing silence in the shop.
The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau.
His left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic
section of his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung
poised above it, the razor motionless. And then, roused from trance
by the door's closing, he accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence.
The barber remembered that there are no circumstances in life--or
just after it--under which a man does not need to be shaved.
He stepped forward, profoundly grave. "I be through with this man
in the chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan," he said, in a hushed tone.
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