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remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair,
while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his
customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest.
When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to
solicitude. When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket
for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to
anxiety. When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were
pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers'
cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say "Next!" first,
my very breath stood still with the suspense. But when at the
culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through
his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single
instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling
into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that
enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell
him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair.
I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck.
Of course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting,
silent, unsociable, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who
are waiting their turn in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the
iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time for a while
reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for
dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the
private bayrum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the
private shaving-cups in the pigeonholes; studied the stained and damaged
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