Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York Read Online Free PDF Page A

results, it is true, had been in line with what she knew by experience. They were the disappointments of life, and yet, after all, were they?She had won a hundred pounds, no, more, a hundred and two pounds, seven shillings and ninepence halfpenny.
    Why then this curious sum, what was the message or the meaning it held for her? For Mrs Harris’s world was filled with signals, signs, messages, and portents from On High. With the price of a Dior dress of four hundred and fifty pounds, three hundred and fifty pounds was still wholly out of her reach. But wait! A flash of insight and inspiration came to her and she snapped on the light and sat up in bed with the sheer excitement of it. It was not really three hundred and fifty pounds any longer. She had not only her hundred pounds in the bank, but a start of two pounds, seven shillings, and ninepence halfpenny on the second hundred, and once she had achieved that, the third hundred pounds would no longer be so difficult.
    ‘That’s it,’ said Mrs Harris to herself aloud, ‘I’ll ’ave it if it’s the last thing I do and it takes the rest of me life.’ She got out of bed, secured pencil and paper and began to work it out.
    Mrs Harris had never in her life paid more than five pounds for a dress, a sum she noted down on the paper opposite the utterly fantastic figure of four hundred and fifty pounds. Had Lady Dant named some such sum as fifty or sixty pounds as the price of the marvellous creations in her wardrobe it is quite possible that Mrs Harris would have put the entire matter out of her head immediately as not only a gap in price she was not prepared to consider, but also a matter of class upon which she preferred not to encroach.
    But the very outrageousness of the sum put it all into a wholly different category. What is it that makes a woman yearn for chinchilla, or Russian sables, a Rolls-Royce, or jewels from Cartier, or Van Cleff and Arpels, or the mostexpensive perfume, restaurant, or neighbourhood to live in, etc.? It is this very pinnacle and preposterousness of price that is the guarantee of the value of her femininity and person. Mrs Harris simply felt that if one owned a dress so beautiful that it cost four hundred and fifty pounds, then there was nothing left upon earth to be desired. Her pencil began to move across the paper.
    She earned three shillings an hour. She worked ten hours a day, six days a week, fifty-two weeks in the year. Mrs Harris screwed her tongue into her cheek and applied the multiplication table, reaching the figure of four hundred and sixty-eight pounds per annum, just the price of a Dior gala dress plus the amount of the fare to Paris and back.
    Now, with equal determination and vigour Mrs Harris initiated a second column, rent, taxes, food, medicine, shoes, and all the little incidentals of living of which she could think. The task was a staggering one when she subtracted debits from credits. Years of saving lay ahead of her, two at the very least, if not three unless she had some other stroke of luck or a windfall of tips. But the figures shook neither her confidence nor her determination. On the contrary, they steeled them. ‘I’ll ’ave it,’ she said once more and snapped out the light. She went to sleep immediately, peacefully as a child, and when she awoke the following morning she felt no longer sad but only eager and excited as one who is about to embark upon a great and unknown adventure.
    The matter came out into the open next evening, their regular night to go to the cinema, when Mrs Butterfield appeared as usual shortly after eight, wrapped against the cold and was surprised to find Mrs Harris in her kitchen unprepared for any expedition, and examining some kindof prospectus entitled - EARN MONEY IN YOUR LEISURE TIME AT HOME.
    ‘We’ll be late, ducks,’ admonished Mrs Butterfield.
    Mrs Harris looked at her friend guiltily. ‘I ain’t going,’ she said.
    ‘Ain’t going to the flicks?’ echoed the astounded Mrs