Abroad with the Jimmies | Page 2

ecstatic shake.
"Are we going to have a house-boat?" asked Bee.
"We!" said Jimmie. "I am going to have a house-boat, and I am going to take my wife. If you are good perhaps she will ask you out to tea one afternoon."
"How many staterooms are there, Jimmie? Can we invite people to stay with us over night?" demanded Bee.
"You cannot," said Jimmie, firmly. "I said a house-boat, not a house party."
"I shall ask the duke," said Bee, clearing her throat in a pleased way. "Can't I, Mrs. Jimmie?"
"Certainly, dear. Ask any one you like."
"If you do," growled Jimmie, who hates the duke because he wears gloves in hot weather, "I'll invite the chambermaid and the head-waiter of this hotel."
"We ought to be starting," said Mrs. Jimmie, pacifically, and we started and went and arrived.
As we were driving to the station I noticed all the way along, and I had noticed them ever since we had been in London, large capital H's on a white background, posted on stone walls, street corners, lampposts, and occasionally on the sidewalks.
"What are those H's for, Jimmie?" I asked. To which he replied with this record-breaking joke:
"Those are the H's that Englishmen have been dropping for generations, and being characteristic of this solid nation, they thus ossified them."
I forgave Jimmie a good deal for that joke.
At the pier at Henley a man met us with a little boat and rowed us up the river, past dozens of house-boats moored along the bank.
The river had been boomed off for the races, which were to begin the next day, with little openings here and there for small boats to cross and recross between races. Private house-boat flags, Union Jacks, bunting, and plants made all the house-boats gay, except ours, which looked bare and forlorn and guiltless of decoration of any sort. It was fortunately situated within plain view of where the races would finish, and by using glasses we could see the start.
Several crews were out practising. One shell which flashed past us held a crew in orange and black sweaters. We had previously noticed that there was no American flag on any of the house-boats.
Orange and black! We nearly stood up in our excitement.
"What's your college?" yelled Jimmie, hoping they were Americans.
"Princeton!" they yelled back.
With that Jimmie ripped open a long pole he was carrying, and the stars and stripes floated out over our shell. The Princeton crew shipped their oars, snatched off their caps, and responded by giving their college yell, ending with "Old Glo-ree! Old Glo-ree!! Old Glo-ree!!!" yelled three times with all the strength of their deep lungs.
That little glimpse of America made Bee and me shiver as if with ague, while Jimmie's chin quivered and he muttered something about "darned smoke in his eyes."
"Jimmie," I said, excitedly, "they are rowing toward us to let us speak if we want to."
Jimmie waved his hand to them and they pulled up alongside. We exchanged enthusiastic "How-do-do's" with them, although we had never seen one of them before.
"Are you going to row to-morrow?" asked Jimmie.
"If you are we will decorate the house-boat with orange and black," I said.
Their faces fell.
"We are only the Track Team," said one. "Princeton has no crew, you know."
"No crew," I cried. "Why not?"
"Well, we haven't any more water than we need to wash in, and we cannot row on the campus."
"Too many trees," said another.
"No water," I cried, "then won't you ever have a crew?"
"Not until some one gives us a million dollars to dam up a natural formation that is there and turn the river into it," said one.
"I'd give it to you in a minute, if I had it, the way I feel now," said Jimmie.
"Well, don't we send crews over here to row?" asked Bee.
"Cornell sent one, but they were beaten," said the Captain with a grin.
"But you wouldn't be beaten," said Bee, decidedly, with her eye on the Captain.
"Come to dinner, all of you, to-morrow night," I said, genially.
Mrs. Jimmie looked frightened, but Bee and Jimmie so heartily seconded my generosity with Jimmie's boat that she resigned herself.
"Wear your sweaters," commanded Bee.
"To dinner?" they said.
"Certainly!" said Bee, decidedly. "That's the only way people will know we are in it. We'll wear shirt-waists to keep you in countenance."
They accepted with alacrity and we parted with mutual esteem.
"I wonder what their names are," said Mrs. Jimmie, reproachfully.
"And they don't know our boat," I added.
"Hi, there!" Jimmie shouted back, "that's our boat yonder--the Lulu."
And with that they all struck up "Lu, Lu, How I love my Lu," at which Bee blushed most unnecessarily, I thought, and murmured:
"How well a handsome athlete looks with bare arms."
"And bare legs," added Jimmie, genially.
We found so much to do on the house-boat, and Jimmie had brought so much bunting and so many flags, that