He was an elderly man, stout, and comfortable looking, but balder than he ought to have been considering the resources of his art, and that he was himself the inventor of an infallible cure for baldness. But he may have preferred that smooth and shining surface as cooler and more comfortable than capillary embellishment. He wore a clean linen apron, with a comb or two stuck in the pocket thereof—an apron that was in itself an invitation to the passing pedestrian to have his hair cut. On seeing Mr. Clissold making for his door, Mr. Clipcome stepped aside with a smile and a bow, and made way for the stranger to enter his abode. It was a very small abode, consisting of a shop and a little slip of a parlour behind it, both the pink of neatness, and both agreeably perfumed with hair oil and lavender water. There was a shining arm-chair with a high back, whereon the patient sat enthroned during the hair-cutting process. A looking-glass squeezed into an angle of the parlour reflected patient and operator. A pincushion hung beside it, balanced by a smart chintz bag, containing a variety of implements. But the object which most struck Maurice’s eye was an old playbill, smaller than modern playbills, and yellow with age, framed and glazed, and hanging against the wall, just as if it had been some choice work of art. It was the programme of a performance of ‘Othello’ that had taken place early in the century. ‘Othello, the Moor of Venice, Mr. Kean.’ ‘You remember the great Kean?’ said Maurice. ‘Yes, sir,’ answered Mr. Clipcome, with pride. ‘I remember Edmund Kean, and I remember Charles Young, and Miss O’Neil, and Miss Foote, and Mrs. Nesbitt, and Mr. Macready, and a good deal more talent such as you’re not likely to see in these days. Seacomb Theatre was worth going to in my boyhood.’ ‘And you were an enthusiastic patron of the drama, I imagine?’ ‘If spending every sixpence of my pocket-money upon admission to the pit is a proof of enthusiasm, I was an enthusiast, sir,’ replied Mr. Clipcome. ‘The sixpences which boys—well, I will venture to say boys of an inferior mind—would have laid out upon cakes and apples, peg-tops, and such like, I spent upon the drama. There’s hardly a line of Shakespeare you could quote that I couldn’t cap with another line. I used to go to the pit of that theatre twice a week while I was a youngster, and three or four times a week after my father’s death, when I was in business for myself and my own master, and used to get a weekly order for exhibiting the bills. And though there were a good many opposed to the closing of the theatre for ever, I don’t believe there was any one in all Seacomb took it to heart as keenly as I did. “Othello’s occupation was gone.”’ ‘Why did they do away with your theatre at last?’ asked Maurice.