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

apple cheeks were flushed and pinker than usual, and her little eyes were electric with excitement. She was in the grip of something bigger than herself, ‘an ’unch’, as she called it. The ’unch was guiding her to the Dog Track at White City, and she was calling upon Mrs Butterfield to accompany her.
    ‘Going to take a plunge are you, dearie?’ queried Mrs Butterfield. ‘I don’t mind a night out meself. ’Ow’re you coming on with your savings?’
    The excitement under which she was labouring made Mrs Harris’s voice hoarse. ‘I’ve got two hundred and fifty quid laid away. If I could double it, I’d have me dress next week.’
    ‘Double it or lose it, dearie?’ said Mrs Butterfield, the confirmed pessimist, who enjoyed looking upon the darker side of life.
    ‘I’ve a ’unch,’ whispered Mrs Harris. ‘Come on then, the treat’s on me.’
    Indeed, to Mrs Harris it seemed almost more than a hunch - in fact, like a message from Above. She had awakened that morning with the feeling that the day was most propitious, and that her God was looking down upon her with a friendly and cooperative eye.
    Mrs Harris’s Deity had been acquired at Sunday school at an early age, and had never changed in her mind from a Being who combined the characteristics of a nannie, a policeman, a magistrate, and Santa Claus, an Omnipotence of many moods, who was at all times concerned with Mrs Harris’s business. She could always tell which phase was uppermost in the Almighty by what was happening to her. She accepted her punishments from Above when she had been naughty without quibbling, as she would have accepted a verdict from the Bench. Likewise, when she was good, she expected rewards; when she was in distress she asked for assistance, and expected service; when things went well she was always prepared to share the credit with the Good Lord. Jehovah was a personal friend and protector, yet she was also a little wary of Him, as she might be of an elderly gentleman who occasionally went into fits of inexplicable tantrums.
    That morning when she was awakened by the feeling that something wonderful was about to happen to her, she was convinced it could only have to do with her desire to own the dress, and that on this occasion she was to be brought nearer to the fulfilment of her wishes.
    All that day at her work she had attuned herself to receive further communications as to what form the expected bounty would take. When she arrived at the flat of Miss Pamela Penrose to cope with the usual mess of untidiness left by the struggling actress, a copy of the
Evening Standard
was lying on the floor, and as she glanced at it she saw that the dogswere running at White City that evening. That was it! The message had been delivered and received. Thereafter there was nothing to do but to find the right dog, the right price, collect her winnings, and be off to Paris.
    Neither Mrs Harris nor Mrs Butterfield was a stranger to the paradise that was White City, but that night the
mise
en scène
that otherwise would have enthralled them - the oval track outlined in electric light, the rush and roar of the mechanical hare, the pulsating ribbon of the dogs streaming behind in its wake, the bustling crowds in the betting queues and the packed stands - was no more than the means to an end. Mrs Butterfield too, by this time, had caught the fever, and went waddling in Mrs Harris’s wake from track to stands and back again without protest. They did not even pause for a cup of tea and a sausage at the refreshment room, so intent were they upon attuning themselves to the work in hand.
    They searched the race cards for clues, they examined the long, thin, stringy animals, they kept their ears flapping for possible titbits of information, and it was this last precaution that eventually yielded results - results of such stunning portent that there could be no question of either authenticity or outcome.
    Crushed in the crowd at the paddock where the