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.
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