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Percombe's. Percombe was the chief of his trade in
Sherton Abbas. He had the patronage of such county offshoots as
had been obliged to seek the shelter of small houses in that
ancient town, of the local clergy, and so on, for some of whom he
had made wigs, while others among them had compensated for
neglecting him in their lifetime by patronizing him when they were
dead, and letting him shave their corpses. On the strength of all
this he had taken down his pole, and called himself "Perruquier to
the aristocracy."
Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his
children's mouths, and they had to be filled. So, behind his
house there was a little yard, reached by a passage from the back
street, and in that yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of
quite another description than the ornamental one in the front
street. Here on Saturday nights from seven till ten he took an
almost innumerable succession of twopences from the farm laborers
who flocked thither in crowds from the country.


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