"Let it for a change. It's set all the world scratching. Let Bolshevik Russia do a little shrieking, now that she feels the boche biting her worse than her native cooties! Get some more sheep-dip and de-louse that pair of things upstairs."
He went away, laughing.
XXIII
THUSIS
For a while the dancing was lively and good-humored hilarity reigned.
The Tzar of all the Bulgars had imbibed enough wine to dull, if not to obliterate that continual desire of his to slink into corners and peep out at a hostile world bent on his assassination. Only when somebody spoke to him too abruptly behind his back did the customary symptoms blanch his face and set his wild eyes roving and his big nose wrinkling like a boar which winds an enemy.
He was having as good a time as such a person can ever have; and toward supper time his exhilaration incited him to attempt a waddling sort of Bulgarian dance with the Countess Manntrapp—an amazing exhibition of mammoth movements on his part; and a sort of infernal and fascinating grace on the part of the lithe Countess.
Dancing with Thusis, I hastily led her out of their way, and everybody else stood in the circle, the center of which was pervaded by Ferdinand and his lively vis-à-vis.
Which performance presently stirred Admiral Lauterlaus from a somewhat beer-sodden lethargy, and he emitted raucous sounds of protest. But Baron Bummelzug began to snap his fingers and stamp and caper in imitation of the schuplattl of the Bavarian peasantry; and all the boche except the Queen, imitated him and seized partners.
Eddin Bey came to ask Thusis, and he was so faultlessly polite and so gay and graceful that she cast a saucy glance of dismissal at me and accepted him.