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It would appear that Mr. Coombes then returned to the kitchen, still in pursuit of gaiety, and, albeit a strict Good Templar, drank (or spilt down the front of the first and only frock-coat) no less than five bottles of the stout Mrs. Coombes insisted upon having for her health’s sake. He made cheerful noises by breaking off the necks of the bottles with several of his wife’s wedding-present dinner-plates, and during the earlier part of this great drunk he sang divers merry ballads. He cut his finger rather badly with one of the bottles–the only bloodshed in this story–and what with that, and the systematic convulsion of his inexperienced physiology by the liquorish brand of Mrs. Coombes’ stout, it may be the evil of the fungus poison was somehow allayed. But we prefer to draw a veil over the concluding incidents of this Sunday afternoon. They ended in the coal cellar, in a deep and healing sleep.

An interval of five years elapsed. Again it was a Sunday afternoon in October, and again Mr. Coombes walked through the pine wood beyond the canal. He was still the same dark-eyed, black-moustached little man that he was at the outset of the story, but his double chin was now scarcely so illusory as it had been. His overcoat was new, with a velvet lapel, and a stylish collar with turn-down corners, free of any coarse starchiness, had replaced the original all-round article. His hat was glossy, his gloves newish–though one finger had split and been carefully mended. And a casual observer would have noticed about him a certain rectitude of bearing, a certain erectness of head that marks the man who thinks well of himself. He was a master now, with three assistants. Beside him walked a larger sunburnt parody of himself, his brother Tom, just back from Australia. They were recapitulating their early struggles, and Mr. Coombes had just been making a financial statement.

“It’s a very nice little business, Jim,” said brother Tom. “In these days of competition you’re jolly lucky to have worked it up so. And you’re jolly lucky, too, to have a wife who’s willing to help like yours does.”

“Between ourselves,” said Mr. Coombes, “it wasn’t always so. It wasn’t always like this. To begin with, the missus was a bit giddy. Girls are funny creatures.”

“Dear me!”

“Yes. You’d hardly think it, but she was downright extravagant, and always having slaps at me. I was a bit too easy and loving, and all that, and she thought the whole blessed show was run for her. Turned the ‘ouse into a regular caravansery, always having her relations and girls from business in, and their chaps. Comic songs a’ Sunday, it was getting to, and driving trade away. And she was making eyes at the chaps, too! I tell you, Tom, the place wasn’t my own.”

“Shouldn’t ‘a’ thought it.”

“It was so. Well–I reasoned with her. I said, ‘I ain’t a duke, to keep a wife like a pet animal. I married you for ‘elp and company.’ I said, ‘You got to ‘elp and pull the business through.’ She wouldn’t ‘ear of it. ‘Very well,’ I says?? ‘I’m a mild man till I’m roused,’ I says, ‘and it’s getting to that.’ But she wouldn’t ‘ear of no warnings.”

“Well?”

“It’s the way with women. She didn’t think I ‘ad it in me to be roused. Women of her sort (between ourselves, Tom) don’t respect a man until they’re a bit afraid of him. So I just broke out to show her. In comes a girl named Jennie, that used to work with her, and her chap. We ‘ad a bit of a row, and I came out ‘ere–it was just such another day as this–and I thought it all out. Then I went back and pitched into them.”

“You did?”

“I did. I was mad, I can tell you. I wasn’t going to ‘it ‘er if I could ‘elp it, so I went back and licked into this chap, just to show ‘er what I could do. ‘E was a big chap, too. Well, I chucked him, and smashed things about, and gave ‘er a scaring, and she ran up and locked ‘erself into the spare room.”

“Well?”

“That’s all. I says to ‘er the next morning, ‘Now you know,’ I says, ‘what I’m like when I’m roused.’ And I didn’t have to say anything more.”

“And you’ve been happy ever after, eh?”

“So to speak. There’s nothing like putting your foot down with them. If it ‘adn’t been for that afternoon I should ‘a’ been tramping the roads now, and she’d ‘a’ been grumbling at me, and all her family grumbling for bringing her to poverty–I know their little ways. But we’re all right now. And it’s a very decent little business, as you say.”

They proceeded on their way meditatively. “Women are funny creatures,” said Brother Tom.

“They want a firm hand,” says Coombes.

“What a lot of these funguses there are about here!” remarked Brother Tom presently. “I can’t see what use they are in the world.”

Mr. Coombes looked. “I dessay they’re sent for some wise purpose,” said Mr. Coombes.

And that was as much thanks as the purple pileus ever got for maddening this absurd little man to the pitch of decisive action, and so altering the whole course of his life.