The Thousand and One Bottles
"This stror, sir, if I might make so bold as to remark—"
"Don't. If the straw makes trouble put it down in the bill." And he mumbled at her—words suspiciously like curses.
He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs. Hall was quite alarmed. But she was a resolute woman. "In which case, I should like to know, sir, what you consider—"
"A shilling. Put down a shilling. Surely a shilling 's enough?"
"So be it," said Mrs. Hall, taking up the table-cloth and beginning to spread it over the table. "If you 're satisfied, of course—"
He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar towards her.
All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs. Hall testifies, for the most part in silence. But once there was a concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the table had been hit, and the smash of a bottle flung violently down, and then a rapid pacing athwart the room. Fearing "something
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