“Big brunettes with long stelets
On the shores of Italee,
Dutch girls with golden curls
Beside the Zuyder Zee...”
Everybody cheered again; Andrews kept looking at the girl at the next table, whose face was red from laughter. She had a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, and kept saying in a low voice:
“O qu'il est drole, celui-la.... O qu'il est drole.”
Heineman picked up a glass and waved it in the air before drinking it off. Several people got up and filled it up from their bottles with white wine and red. The French soldier at the next table pulled an army canteen from under his chair and hung it round Heineman's neck.
Heineman, his face crimson, bowed to all sides, more like a Chinese porcelain figure than ever, and started singing in all solemnity this time.
“Hulas and hulas would pucker up their lips,
He fell for their ball-bearing hips
For they were pips...”
His chunky body swayed to the ragtime. The woman in the corner kept time with long white arms raised above her head.
“Bet she's a snake charmer,” said Henslowe.
“O, wild woman loved that child
He would drive ten women wild!
O, Sinbad was in bad all around!”
Heineman waved his arms, pointed again to Henslowe, and sank into his chair saying in the tones of a Shakespearean actor: