A month of Paris, and then I long for fresh fields and pastures new. Of course there is nowhere like Paris for clothes or to eat. But when one has got all the clothes one can afford and is no longer hungry, having acquired a chronic indigestion from too intimate a knowledge of Marguery’s and Ledoyen’s, what is there to do but to leave?
Paris is essentially a holiday town, but I get horribly tired of too long a holiday, and after the newness is worn off one discovers that it is the superficiality of it all that palls. The people are superficial; their amusements are feathery—even the beauty of it all is “only skin deep.”
Therefore, after one glimpse of Poland, the pagan in my nature called me to the East, and six months of Paris have only intensified my longing to get away—to get to something solid; to find myself once more with the serious thinkers of the world.
In the mean time Bee has deserted me for the more interesting society of Billy, and now she writes me long letters so filled with his sayings and doings that I must move on or I shall die of homesickness. I have decided on Russia and the Nile, taking intermediate countries by the way. This is entirely Billy’s fault.
When I first decided to go to Russia, I supposed, of course, that I could induce the Jimmies to go with me, but, to my consternation, they revolted, and gently but firmly expressed their determination to go to Egypt by way of Italy. So I have taken a companion, and if all goes well we shall meet the Jimmies on the terrace of Shepheard’s in February.
I packed three trunks in my very best style, only to have Mrs. Jimmie regard my work with a face so full of disapproval that it reminded me of Bee’s. She then proceeded to put “everything any mortal could possibly want” into one trunk, with what seemed to me supernatural skill and common-sense, calmly sending the other two to be stored at Munroe’s. I don’t like to disparage Mrs. Jimmie’s idea of what I need, but it does seem to me that nearly everything I have wanted here in Berlin is “stored at Munroe’s.”
My companion and I, with faultless arithmetic, calculated our expenses and drew out what we considered “plenty of French money to get us to the German frontier.” Then Jimmie took my companion and Mrs. Jimmie took me to the train.
Their cab got to the station first, and when we came up Jimmie was grinning, and my companion looked rather sheepish.
“I didn’t have enough money to pay the extra luggage,” she whispered. “I had to borrow of Mr. Jimmie.”
“That’s just like you,” I said, severely. “Now I drew more than you did.”