‘Oh, very well; I apologise.’
He received it with a smile, one of those large smiles which goes all
around over, and has folds in it, and wrinkles, and spirals, and looks
like the place where you have thrown a brick in a pond; and then in the
act of his taking a glimpse of the bill this smile froze solid, and
turned yellow, and looked like those wavy, wormy spreads of lava which
you find hardened on little levels on the side of Vesuvius. I never
before saw a smile caught like that, and perpetuated. The man stood
there holding the bill, and looking like that, and the proprietor
hustled up to see what was the matter, and said briskly:
‘Well, what’s up? what’s the trouble? what’s wanting?’