OUR HOUSE-BOAT AT HENLEY
It speaks volumes for an amiability I have always
claimed for myself through sundry fierce disputes
on the subject with my sister, that, even after two
years of travel in Europe with her and Mr. and Mrs.
Jimmie, they should still wish for my company for
a journey across France and Germany to Russia.
Bee says it speaks volumes for the tempers of the
Jimmies, but then Bee is my sister, or to put it more
properly, I am Bee’s sister, and what woman
is a heroine to her own sister?
In any event I am not. Bee thinks I am a creature
of feeble intelligence who must be “managed.”
Bee loves to “manage” people, and I, who
love to watch her circuitous, diplomatic, velvety,
crooked way to a straight end, allow myself to be
so “managed;” and so after safely disposing
of Billy in the grandmotherly care of Mamma for another
six months, Bee and I gaily took ship and landed safely
at the door of the Cecil, having been escorted up
from Southampton by Jimmie.
While repeated journeys to Europe lose the thrill
of expectant uncertainty which one’s first held,
yet there is something very pleasing about “going
back.” And so we were particularly glad
again to join forces with our friends the Jimmies
and travel with them, for they, like Bee and me, travel
aimlessly and are never hampered with plans.
Everybody seems to know that we do not mean business,
and nobody has ever dared to ask whether our intentions
were serious or not.
In this frame of mind we floated over to England and
had a fortnight of “the season” in London.
But this soon palled on us, and we fell into the idle
mood of waiting for something to turn up.
One Sunday morning Bee and Mrs. Jimmie and I were
sitting at a little table near the entrance to the
Cecil Hotel, when Jimmie came out of a side door and
sat down in front of us, leaning his elbows on the
table and grinning at us in a suspicious silence.
We all waited for him to begin, but he simply sat
and smoked and grinned.
“Well! Well!” I said, impatiently,
“What now?”
You would know that Jimmie was an American by the
way he smokes. He simply eats up cigars, inhales
them, chews them. The end of his cigar blazes
like a danger signal and breathes like an engine.
He can hold his hands and feet still, but his nervousness
crops out in his smoking. Finally, exasperated
by his continued silence, Bee said, severely:
“Jimmie, have you anything up your sleeve?
If so, speak out!”
“Well!” said Jimmie, brushing the cigar
ashes off his wife’s skirt, “I thought
I’d take you all out to Henley this morning to
look at the house-boat.”
“House-boat!” shrieked Bee and I in a
whisper, clutching Jimmie by the sleeve and lapel
of his coat and giving him an ecstatic shake.
“Are we going to have a house-boat?” asked
Bee.
