Abroad with the Jimmies | Page 9

we take him back to the house-boat. Remember he is my guest."
At this the German smiled with such insolence and pulled his hat further down on his brow with such a vicious look of satisfaction that I had all I could do to hold myself in. The boats flew back to the house-boat as if on wings.
"You see, miss," he leaned forward and said to me in low tones. "You do not like me. You love your flag. Ah, ha, I revenge myself."
"Just wait till I tell Jimmie," I said.
"Ah, ha, he will do nothing! I play for his concert to-night."
As the boats pulled up to the steps of the house-boat, Jimmie met us with his two friends, who had come during our absence. We had never seen them before.
"What do you think, Jimmie?" stammered Bee, stumbling up the steps in her excitement.
"And Jimmie, he wouldn't take his hat off to the flag!"
"And Jimmie, I wish you had been there, you'd have drowned him!" came from all of us at once.
"What's that?" cried Jimmie in a rage at once, and:
"What's that?" came from the men behind him. "Wouldn't take off his hat to the flag? Who wouldn't?"
"That nasty little German!" cried Miss Wemyss.
We were all out of the boats by that time except the unhappy object of our wrath, whose countenance by this time was working into patterns like a kaleidoscope.
"Mr. Jimmie," he said, coming to the end of the boat with every intention of stepping out, "I apologise to you. I am very sorry."
"Get back in that boat!" thundered Jimmie.
"But, sir! Your concert to-night! I play for you!"
"You go to the devil," said Jimmie. "You'll not put your foot on board this boat again. Off you go! Take him down to Henley!" he ordered the boatman.
"Very well! Very well!" said the German, "I go, but I do not take my hat off to your flag."
"Ah! Don't you?" cried the Princeton man, making a grab for the German's sailor hat with his long arm, just as the boat shot away. He stooped and took it up full of Thames water and flung it thus loaded squarely in the little wretch's face, while the man at the oars dexterously tossed it overboard, where it floated bottom upwards in the river, and the boat shot out toward Henley with the bareheaded and most excited specimen of the human race it was ever our lot to behold.
Then Jimmie introduced his friends. Bee has just looked over this narrative of the pleasantest week we ever spent in England and she says:
"You haven't said a word about the races."
"So I haven't."
But they were there.
CHAPTER II
PARIS
"Now," said Jimmie as our train was pulling into Paris, "we are all decided, are we not, that we shall stay in Paris only two days?"
His eyes met ours with apprehension and a determination that ended in a certain amount of questioning in their glance.
"Certainly!" we all hastened to assure him. "Not over two days."
"Just long enough," said Jimmie, beamingly, "to have one lunch at the Café Marguery for sole à la Normande--"
"And one afternoon at the Louvre to see the Venus and the Victory--" I pleaded.
"And the Father Tiber--" added Jimmie, waxing enthusiastic.
"Yes, and one dinner at the Pavilion d'Armenonville to hear the Tziganes--" said Bee.
"And one afternoon on the Seine to go to St. Cloud to see the brides dance at the Pavilion Bleu, and a supper afterward in the open to have a poulet and a pêche flambée."
Jimmie by this time was wriggling in ecstasy.
"And just time to order two or three gowns apiece and have one look at hats," added Mrs. Jimmie, complacently.
"'Two or three gowns apiece and one look at hats,'" cried Jimmie. "And how long will that take? We agreed on two days, and you never said a word about clothes. That means a whole week!"
"Not at all, Jimmie," said Bee. "It's too late to do anything to-night. To-morrow morning we'll go and look. In the afternoon we'll think it over while we're doing the Louvre. It is always cool and quiet there, and looking at statuary always helps me to make up my mind about clothes. The next morning we'll go and order. In the afternoon we'll buy our hats, and with one day more for the first fittings, I believe we might manage and have the things sent after us to Baden-Baden."
"Not at all," put in Mrs. Jimmie. "They will never be satisfactory unless we put our minds on the subject and give them plenty of time. We must stay at least two days more. Give us four days, Jimmie."
I had to laugh at Jimmie's rueful face. He was about to remonstrate, but Bee switched him off diplomatically by saying, in her most deferential manner:
"What hotel have you decided on, Jimmie? It's such