And at Jochebed the mother became
hysterical with laughter. "Jock-at-a-Venture," she had sniggered, and
Rappey, mischievously taking her at her word, christened the infant
Jock-at-a-Venture before she could protest; and the infant was stamped
for ever as peculiar.
He lived up to his name. He ran away twice, and after having been both a
sailor and a soldier, he returned home with the accomplishment of
flourishing a razor, and settled in Bursley as a barber. Immediately he
became the most notorious barber in the Five Towns, on account of his
gab and his fisticuffs. It was he who shaved the left side of the face
of an insulting lieutenant of dragoons (after the great riots of '45,
which two thousand military had not quelled), and then pitched him out
of the shop, soapsuds and all, and fought him to a finish in the Cock
Yard and flung him through the archway into the market-place with just
half a magnificent beard and moustache. It was he who introduced
hair-dyeing into Bursley. Hair-dyeing might have grown popular in the
town if one night, owing to some confusion with red ink, the Chairman of
the Bursley Burial Board had not emerged from Jock-at-a-Venture's with a
vermilion top-knot and been greeted on the pavement by his waiting wife
with the bitter words: "Thou foo!"
A little later Jock-at-a-Venture abandoned barbering and took up music,
for which he had always shown a mighty gift.
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