The row had arisen about that beastly Jennie again.  Jennie was his wife’s friend, and, by no invitation of Mr. Coombes, she came in every blessed Sunday to dinner, and made a shindy all the afternoon.  She was a big, noisy girl, with a taste for loud colours and a strident laugh; and this Sunday she had outdone all her previous intrusions by bringing in a fellow with her, a chap as showy as herself.  And Mr. Coombes, in a starchy, clean collar and his Sunday frock-coat, had sat dumb and wrathful at his own table, while his wife and her guests talked foolishly and undesirably, and laughed aloud.  Well, he stood that, and after dinner (which, “as usual,” was late), what must Miss Jennie do but go to the piano and play banjo tunes, for all the world as if it were a week-day!  Flesh and blood could not endure such goings on.  They would hear next door, they would hear in the road, it was a public announcement of their disrepute.  He had to speak.

He had felt himself go pale, and a kind of rigour had affected his respiration as he delivered himself.  He had been sitting on one of the chairs by the window—­the new guest had taken possession of the arm-chair.  He turned his head.  “Sun Day!” he said over the collar, in the voice of one who warns.  “Sun Day!” What people call a “nasty” tone, it was.

Jennie had kept on playing, but his wife, who was looking through some music that was piled on the top of the piano, had stared at him.  “What’s wrong now?” she said; “can’t people enjoy themselves?”

“I don’t mind rational ’njoyment, at all,” said little Coombes, “but I ain’t a-going to have week-day tunes playing on a Sunday in this house.”

“What’s wrong with my playing now?” said Jennie, stopping and twirling round on the music-stool with a monstrous rustle of flounces.

Coombes saw it was going to be a row, and opened too vigorously, as is common with your timid, nervous men all the world over.  “Steady on with that music-stool!” said he; “it ain’t made for ’eavy-weights.”

“Never you mind about weights,” said Jennie, incensed.  “What was you saying behind my back about my playing?”

“Surely you don’t ’old with not having a bit of music on a Sunday, Mr. Coombes?” said the new guest, leaning back in the arm-chair, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke and smiling in a kind of pitying way.  And simultaneously his wife said something to Jennie about “Never mind ’im.  You go on, Jinny.”

“I do,” said Mr. Coombes, addressing the new guest.

“May I arst why?” said the new guest, evidently enjoying both his cigarette and the prospect of an argument.  He was, by-the-by, a lank young man, very stylishly dressed in bright drab, with a white cravat and a pearl and silver pin.  It had been better taste to come in a black coat, Mr. Coombes thought.

“Because,” began Mr. Coombes, “it don’t suit me.  I’m a business man.  I ’ave to study my connection.  Rational ’njoyment—­”