The captain met Mrs.Hepton, the landlady, plump, gray-haired, and graciously hospitable.

She did not look at all like a business woman, but appearances are not always to be trusted; Mrs.
Hepton had learned not to trust them--also delinquent boarders, too far.
He met Miss Sherborne, whose coiffure did not match in spots, but whose voice, so he learned afterward, had been "cultivated abroad." Miss Sherborne gave music lessons.

Mrs.Van Winkle Ruggles also claimed his attention and held it, principally because of the faded richness of her apparel.

Mrs.Ruggles was a widow, suffering from financial reverses; the contrast between her present mode of living and the grandeur of the past formed her principal topic of conversation.
There were half a dozen others, including an artist whose aversion to barbers was proclaimed by the luxuriant length of his locks, a quiet old gentleman who kept the second-hand book store two doors below; his wife, a neat, trim little body; and Mr.and Mrs.C.Dickens, no less.
Mr.Dickens was bald, an affliction which he tried to conceal by brushing the hair at the sides of his head across the desert at the top.

He shaved his cheeks and wore a beard and mustache.