The beer sour! Who says so? Mr. Wilkins? Let me taste it. So it is; it’s the thunderstorm. I suppose the whole lot’s gone wrong. Harry! Harry! Where’s your master? Up in the billiard-room? Good gracious! isn’t that billiard-table fitted up yet? The men have been at it all day! CHAPTER XIII. _A LOVE STORY._ If there is one thing that is unpleasant in a small hotel, it is to have anybody very ill in it. I dare say it is unpleasant in a big hotel; but there it isn’t noticed so much, as, of course, nothing is noticed much in a large place, which makes up hundreds of beds every night. A gentleman, who used to stay with us now and then--an artist, who had been all over the world nearly, and every year went away abroad--was very fond of gossiping with us of an evening, and he told me a lot about these big hotels, which was very interesting, and especially so to Harry and myself, we being in the hotel business, though, of course, only in a small way, compared with the huge concerns that call themselves Grand Hotel Something or other, and are small towns. Mr. Stuart--that was the artist’s name who stayed with us--said that he hated these huge hotels, because you were only a number; that you ceased to be a human being, and became No. 367 or No. 56 or No. 111, as the case might be, and if you were ill, or if you died, it was all the same to the management. He said he always had visions of lying ill in one of these places, and hearing somebody call down the speaking-tube outside in the corridor, “Doctor wanted, No. 360,” and perhaps after that, “Coffin wanted, No. 360.” And if ever he felt the least bit ill he always got out of a big hotel as quickly as possible, and went to a small one, so as to leave off being a number, and become a human being again. He said it was bad enough in the big hotels in our country, but abroad it was something awful to be ill in them. He had a friend of his taken very ill in Italy, in a Grand Hotel, and he used to go and sit with him and try to cheer him up, and he said directly he began to be ill and it was thought he was going to die, the hotel tariff went up about two hundred per cent. for everything. The poor gentleman died in the hotel, and the friends had to be telegraphed for to come and settle up, and a nice settle up it was. Not only was the bill something terrible--such a thing as a cup of beef-tea being about five shillings, and double and treble charged for every little thing in the way of refreshment for the invalid, brought up into the room--but, after the poor gentleman was dead, the manager of the hotel sent the friends in a bill, charging them for the bed, the bed-linen, the curtains, the carpets, and the furniture, and even the wall-paper.