So the new convert to joie de vivre emerged upon the passage, his decorations a little scattered, but that respectable hatful of fungi still under his arm.  He hesitated at the three ways, and decided on the kitchen.  Whereupon Clarence, who was fumbling with the key, gave up the attempt to imprison his host, and fled into the scullery, only to be captured before he could open the door into the yard.  Mr. Clarence is singularly reticent of the details of what occurred.  It seems that Mr. Coombes’ transitory irritation had vanished again, and he was once more a genial playfellow.  And as there were knives and meat choppers about, Clarence very generously resolved to humour him and so avoid anything tragic.  It is beyond dispute that Mr. Coombes played with Mr. Clarence to his heart’s content; they could not have been more playful and familiar if they had known each other for years.  He insisted gaily on Clarence trying the fungi, and, after a friendly tussle, was smitten with remorse at the mess he was making of his guest’s face.  It also appears that Clarence was dragged under the sink and his face scrubbed with the blacking brush—­he being still resolved to humour the lunatic at any cost—­and that finally, in a somewhat dishevelled, chipped, and discoloured condition, he was assisted to his coat and shown out by the back door, the shopway being barred by Jennie.  Mr. Coombes’ wandering thoughts then turned to Jennie.  Jennie had been unable to unfasten the shop door, but she shot the bolts against Mr. Coombes’ latch-key, and remained in possession of the shop for the rest of the evening.

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