“You must drive us to our hotel.” she
said, firmly. “We have waited two hours.”
“Impossible, madame!” said the man.
“But you must,” we all said in
chorus.
“You shall have much money,” said Jimmie
in his worst French.
“All the same it is impossible, monsieur,”
said the man.
He regretted exceedingly his inability to oblige the
ladies, but—and he prepared to drive off.
“Get in, girls,” said Mrs. Jimmie, firmly,
pushing us in at the back of the wagon. The man
expostulated, not in anger but appealingly. Mrs.
Jimmie would not listen. She said there ought
to be more cabs in Paris, and that she regretted it
as much as he did, but she climbed in as she talked,
and gave the address of the hotel.
“You shall have three times your fare,”
she said, calmly, “drive on!”
“But what madame demands is impossible,”
pleaded the poor man. “I am on my way for
another body. Madame sits in the morgue wagon!”
But there he was mistaken, for madame sat nowhere.
Before he had done speaking madame was flying through
the air, alighting on poor Jimmie’s foot, while
Bee and I clawed at our dripping skirts in a mad effort
to follow suit.
The morgue wagon pursued its way down the Rue de Rivoli,
while we risked colds, croup, and everything else
in an endeavour to find a “grand bain,”
splashing through puddles but marching steadily on,
Jimmie in a somewhat strained silence limping uncomplainingly
at our side.
STRASBURG AND BADEN-BADEN
We are on our way to the Passion Play, and although
each of the four of us is a monument of amiability
when taken individually, as a quartet we sometimes
clash. At present we are fighting over the route
we shall take between Paris and Oberammergau.
Bee and Mrs. Jimmie have replenished their wardrobes
in the Rue de la Paix, and wish to follow the trail
of American tourists going to Baden-Baden, while Jimmie
and I, having rooted out of a German student in the
Latin Quarter two or three unknown carriage routes
through the mountains which lead to unknown spots not
double starred, starred, or even mentioned in Baedeker,
are wondering how the battle between clothes and Bohemianism
will end.
We arrived at Strasburg still in an amiable wrangle,
but all four agreed on seeing the clock which has
made the town famous. Our time was so limited
that there was not, as is often the case, an opportunity
for all four of us to get our own way.
Anybody who did not know her, would imagine by the
quiet way that Bee has let the subject of Baden-Baden
alone for the whole day, that she had quite given
up going there, but I know Bee. She has left Jimmie
and me to defend the front of the fortress, while
she is bringing all her troops up in the rear.
Bee does not believe in a charge with plenty of shouting
and galloping and noise. Bee’s manoeuvres
