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.”