“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.
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 Cafe Marguery for
sole a 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 peche flambee.”
