Read Ebook: Abroad with the Jimmies by Bell Lilian

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Ebook has 1007 lines and 56014 words, and 21 pages

CHAPTER

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.

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.

"How many staterooms are there, Jimmie? Can we invite people to stay with us over night?" demanded Bee.

"You cannot," said Jimmie, firmly. "I said a house-boat, not a house party."

"I shall ask the duke," said Bee, clearing her throat in a pleased way. "Can't I, Mrs. Jimmie?"

"Certainly, dear. Ask any one you like."

"If you do," growled Jimmie, who hates the duke because he wears gloves in hot weather, "I'll invite the chambermaid and the head-waiter of this hotel."

"We ought to be starting," said Mrs. Jimmie, pacifically, and we started and went and arrived.

As we were driving to the station I noticed all the way along, and I had noticed them ever since we had been in London, large capital H's on a white background, posted on stone walls, street corners, lampposts, and occasionally on the sidewalks.

"What are those H's for, Jimmie?" I asked. To which he replied with this record-breaking joke:

"Those are the H's that Englishmen have been dropping for generations, and being characteristic of this solid nation, they thus ossified them."

I forgave Jimmie a good deal for that joke.

At the pier at Henley a man met us with a little boat and rowed us up the river, past dozens of house-boats moored along the bank.

The river had been boomed off for the races, which were to begin the next day, with little openings here and there for small boats to cross and recross between races. Private house-boat flags, Union Jacks, bunting, and plants made all the house-boats gay, except ours, which looked bare and forlorn and guiltless of decoration of any sort. It was fortunately situated within plain view of where the races would finish, and by using glasses we could see the start.

Several crews were out practising. One shell which flashed past us held a crew in orange and black sweaters. We had previously noticed that there was no American flag on any of the house-boats.

Orange and black! We nearly stood up in our excitement.

"What's your college?" yelled Jimmie, hoping they were Americans.

"Princeton!" they yelled back.

With that Jimmie ripped open a long pole he was carrying, and the stars and stripes floated out over our shell. The Princeton crew shipped their oars, snatched off their caps, and responded by giving their college yell, ending with "Old Glo-ree! Old Glo-ree!! Old Glo-ree!!!" yelled three times with all the strength of their deep lungs.

That little glimpse of America made Bee and me shiver as if with ague, while Jimmie's chin quivered and he muttered something about "darned smoke in his eyes."

"Jimmie," I said, excitedly, "they are rowing toward us to let us speak if we want to."

Jimmie waved his hand to them and they pulled up alongside. We exchanged enthusiastic "How-do-do's" with them, although we had never seen one of them before.

"Are you going to row to-morrow?" asked Jimmie.

"If you are we will decorate the house-boat with orange and black," I said.

Their faces fell.

"We are only the Track Team," said one. "Princeton has no crew, you know."

"No crew," I cried. "Why not?"

"Well, we haven't any more water than we need to wash in, and we cannot row on the campus."

"Too many trees," said another.

"No water," I cried, "then won't you ever have a crew?"

"Not until some one gives us a million dollars to dam up a natural formation that is there and turn the river into it," said one.

"I'd give it to you in a minute, if I had it, the way I feel now," said Jimmie.

"Well, don't we send crews over here to row?" asked Bee.

"Cornell sent one, but they were beaten," said the Captain with a grin.

"But you wouldn't be beaten," said Bee, decidedly, with her eye on the Captain.

"Come to dinner, all of you, to-morrow night," I said, genially.

Mrs. Jimmie looked frightened, but Bee and Jimmie so heartily seconded my generosity with Jimmie's boat that she resigned herself.

"Wear your sweaters," commanded Bee.

"To dinner?" they said.

"Certainly!" said Bee, decidedly. "That's the only way people will know we are in it. We'll wear shirt-waists to keep you in countenance."

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