PRINCE OF WALES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18848, 10 April 1931, Page 12

PRINCE OF WALES.

DANCING PARTNER’S PRAISE. “HE ISN’T A BIT OFFISH.” The most envied girl in the Panama Canal Zone on February 7, was Miss Eleanor Nichols, who was the dancing partner of the Prince of Wales and of Prince George before their departure southwards in the liner Oropesa, says the New York correspondent of the “Daily Mail.” Miss Nichols is blue-eyed, chestnuthaired and athletic, with a complexion becomingly tanned by several years in the tropics, and her picture occupied a place of honour in New York’s daily newspapers as that of the girl “who captivated the Prince of Wales.” She is a daughter of Commander Nichols, of the United States Navy, whose home is at Newport, Rhode Island, but who for some years past has been stationed at Balboa. It was while Miss Nichols was seated with her parents in the Union Club at Panama City that one of the Royal equerries went over and requested the honour of a dance. The scene was most romantic, for the “ballroom” of the club is built out into the bay, and is wide open to the stars and the moon. The equerry presented Miss Nichols to Prince George who danced with her. Hardly had Miss Nichols sat down, when the Prince of Wales, as the delighted girl afterwards said, “without sending a messenger, walked over and asked for the next dance.” As the occasion was an informal one, the Prince danced with her repeatedly until the hour came for his departure. Miss Nichols when the Princes had departed, deprecated “all the fuss,” observing “It’s so silly,” but she satisfied questioners by saying: “He isn’t a bit offish. One would never think, just by meeting and talking with him, that he was anything but just one of the nicest young men imaginable. He is an awfully nice dancer, too, but I believe Prince George is the better dancer, but he does not have so much to say.” Miss Nichols said that the Prince of Wales practised Spanish with her, and she understood his Spanish far better than that of the Spanish people, who talked so rapidly. After her parents had been presented to the Prince, her father remarked: “He is just like a boy of Annapolis.” (Annopolis is the site of the United States Naval Academy.) Prince George also danced with Misj Cecilia Alfara, the very attractive niece of the new President of Panama, who until the recent “four-hour” revolution was Minister at Washington.