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Updated: June 18, 2025
"And you combine them all," he said, patting his companion's arm. Mr. Billing smiled. "You ought to know best," he said, modestly. "You'll be surprised to find how easy it is," continued Mr. Purnip. "You will go from strength to strength. Old habits will disappear, and you will hardly know you have lost them.
"And what about telling lies?" demanded his wife. "What would your Mr. Purnip say to that?" "You do as you're told," exclaimed the harassed Mr. Billing. "I'm not going to tell 'em; it's you." Mrs. Billing returned to the parlour, and, with Mr.
In a few months' time you will probably be wondering what you could ever have seen in beer, for example." "I thought you said you didn't want me to give up beer?" said the other. "We don't," said Mr. Purnip. "I mean that as you grow in stature you will simply lose the taste for it." Mr. Billing came to a sudden full stop.
Billing, simply. He finished the evening in the Blue Lion, where he had one bar almost to himself, and, avoiding his wife's reproachful glance when he arrived home, procured some warm water and began to bathe his honourable scars. "Mr. Purnip 'as been round with another gentleman," said his wife. Mr. Billing said, "Oh!" "Very much upset they was, and 'ope you'll go and see them," she continued.
Mr. Purnip took the arm of the new recruit and hung over him almost tenderly as they walked along; Mr. Billing, with a look of conscious virtue on his jolly face, listened with much satisfaction to his friend's compliments. "It's such an example," said the latter. "Now we've got you the others will follow like sheep. You will be a bright lamp in the darkness."
As an earnest of good faith, he consented, after a short struggle, to a slip of oil-cloth for the passage; a pair of vases for the front room; and a new and somewhat expensive corn-cure for Mrs. Billing. "And let's 'ope you go on as you've begun," said that gratified lady. "There's something in old Purnip after all. I've been worrying you for months for that oilcloth.
His explanation to his indignant wife that, having turned the other cheek the night before, he was in no mood for further punishment, was received in chilling silence. "They'll soon get tired of it," he said, hopefully; "and I ain't going to be beat by a lot of chaps wot I could lick with one 'and tied behind me. They'll get to understand in time; Mr. Purnip says so.
"I wish you'd got a blinking dozen," he said, wistfully. "Well, so long. Be good." He walked into the Blue Lion absolutely free from that sense of shame which Mr. Purnip had predicted, and, accepting a pint from an admirer, boasted noisily of his exploit. Mr. Billing, suffering both mentally and physically, walked slowly home to his astonished wife.
Purnip, that estimable gentleman, who seemed to have a weird gift of meeting him at all sorts of times and places, never making any allusion to his desertion, but showing quite clearly by his manner that he still hoped for the return of the wanderer. It was awkward for a man of sensitive disposition, and Mr. Billing, before entering a street, got into the habit of peering round the corner first.
He came from it spluttering, and, seizing a small towel, stood in the door-way burnishing his face and regarding his wife with a smile which Mr. Purnip himself could not have surpassed. He sat down to supper, and between bites explained in some detail the lines on which his future life was to be run.
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