Bee’s travelling-skirt was tailor-made, tight
at the belt, and of ample fulness around the bottom.
She had on a shirt-waist, a linen collar, the Charvet
tie, a black hat with a few gay coloured flowers on
it, and a lace petticoat from the Rue de la Paix.
At the first strains of the skirt dance from the delighted
band Bee seized her skirts firmly and began the dance
which is so familiar to us, but which those Tyrolese
peasants had never seen before. Jimmie says he
would rather see Bee do the skirt dance than any professional
he ever saw on any stage. He says that her kicks
are such poems that he forgives her everything when
he thinks of them, but when she danced that night,
Jimmie was so tickled by the excitement and polite
interest she created in her primitive audience, that
he stretched himself out on the bench in such shrieks
of laughter that even Bee grinned at him, while I
simply passed away. She sat down, flushed, breathless,
but triumphant.
Instantly she was surrounded by every young fellow
in the room, imploring her to dance with him, and
at once Bee became the belle of the ball. And,
if you will believe it, when Mrs. Jimmie and I went
outside to get a breath of air, Bee, the ladylike;
Bee, the conservative; haughty, intolerant Bee, was
dancing with the cowherd!
CHAPTER VIII
SALZBURG
We had our breakfast the next morning on the same
piazza where we had dined and where the early morning
sun gave an entirely new aspect to the eternal blueness
of the Achensee. Oh, you who have seen only Italian
lakes, think not that you know blue when you see it,
until you have seen the Achensee!
“If you would only get back into yourself,”
said Jimmie, addressing my absent spirit, “you
might help me decide where we shall go next.”
“I can’t leave here,” I replied.
“I cannot tear myself away from this spot.”
“It is beautiful,” murmured Bee,
dreamily, but she murmured dreamily not so much because
of the beauty of the scene as because eating in the
open air that early in the morning always makes her
sleepy.
“’Tis not that,” I responded. “’Tis
because, while some few modest triumphs have come
my way, I think I never achieved one which gave me
such acute physical satisfaction as I underwent last
night at my sister Bee’s success as a premiere
danseuse. Shall I ever forget it? Shall
danger, or sickness, or poverty, or disaster ever blot
from my mind that scene? Jimmie, never again
can she scorn us for our sawdust-ring proclivities,
for do you know, I shouldn’t be surprised
to see her end her days on the trapeze!”
But if I fondly hoped to make Bee waver in her thorough
approval of her own acts, this cheerful exchange of
badinage, where the exchange was all on my part, undeceived
me, for Bee simply looked at me without replying,
so Jimmie uncoiled himself and handed the map to Bee.
