Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York by Paul Gallico Read Free Book Online

There was no doubt, but that Mrs Harris fell in love with it immediately she saw it in the window, but at first turned resolutely away for it was priced at a guinea, while all about it were others on sale, specials at ten and six, and even some at seven and six.
    But Mrs Harris would not have been a true London char had she not favoured the one at one guinea, for it had been thought of, designed, and made for members of her profession. The hat was a kind of flat sailor affair of greenstraw, but what made it distinguished was the pink rose on a short but flexible stem that was affixed to the front. It was, of course, her fondness for flowers and the rose that got Mrs Harris. They went into the shop and Mrs Harris dutifully tried on shapes and materials considered to be within her price range, but her thoughts and her eyes kept roving to the window where the hat was displayed. Finally she could contain herself no longer and asked for it.
    Mrs Butterfield examined the price tag with horror. ‘Coo,’ she said, ‘a guinea! It is a waste of money, you that’s been syving for so long.’
    Mrs Harris set it upon her head and was lost. ‘I don’t care,’ she said fiercely, ‘I can go a week later.’
    If a camera was to fix her features and person for all time, to be carried in her passport, to be shown to her friends, to be preserved in a little frame on Mrs Butterfield’s dressing table, that was how she wanted it, with that hat and no other. ‘I’ll ’ave it,’ she said to the sales girl and produced the twenty-one shillings. She left the shop wearing it contentedly. After all, what was one guinea to someone who was about to invest four hundred and fifty pounds in a dress.
    The passport photographer was not busy when they arrived and soon had Mrs Harris posed before the cold eye of his camera while hump-backed he inspected her from beneath the concealment of his black cloth. He then turned on a hot battery of floodlights which illuminated Mrs Harris’s every fold, line, and wrinkle etched into her shrewd and merry little face by the years of toil.
    ‘And now, madam,’ he said, ‘if you would kindly remove that hat—’
    ‘Not b——likely,’ said Mrs Harris succinctly, ‘what the ’ell do you think I’ve bought this ’at for if not to wear it in me photograph.’
    The photographer said: ‘Sorry, madam, against regulations. The Passport Office won’t accept any photographs with hats on. I can make some specials at two guineas a dozen for you later, with the hat on, if you like.’
    Mrs Harris told the photographer a naughty thing to do with his two-guinea specials, but Mrs Butterfield consoled her. ‘Never mind, dearie,’ she said, ‘you’ll have it to wear when you go to Paris. You’ll be right in with the fashion.’
    It was on a hazy May morning, four months later, or to be exact two years, seven months, three weeks, and one day following her resolve to own a Dior dress, that Mrs Harris, firm and fully equipped beneath the green hat with the pink rose, was seen off on the bus to the Air Station by a tremulous and nervous Mrs Butterfield. Besides the long and arduously hoarded fortune, the price of the dress, she was equipped with passport, return ticket to Paris, and sufficient funds to get there and back.
    The intended schedule of her day included the selection and purchase of her dress, lunch in Paris, a bit of sightseeing, and return by the evening plane.
    The clients had all been warned of the unusual event of Mrs Harris’s taking a day off, with Mrs Butterfield substituting, and had reacted in accordance with their characters and natures. Major Wallace was, of course, dubious, since he could not so much as find a clean towel or a pair of socks without the assistance of Mrs Harris, but it was the actress, Miss Pamela Penrose, who kicked up the ugliest fuss, storming at the little char. ‘But that’s horrid of you. You can’t. I won’t hear of it. I pay you, don’t I! I’ve a most