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.