Mrs Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs Harris Goes to New York by Paul Gallico & Paul Gallico

Author:Paul Gallico & Paul Gallico
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

LIKE all great ideas and schemes born out of Genius by Necessity, Mrs Harris’s plan to smuggle little Henry aboard the s.s. Ville de Paris at Southampton had the virtue of simplicity, and one to which the routine of boarding the ship with its attendant chaos, as Mr Schreiber had carefully explained to her, lent itself beautifully.

Since the Schreibers were going First-Class and the two women Tourist, they would not be able to travel together, and he had rehearsed for her the details of exactly what they would have to do - the departure by boat-train from Waterloo, the arrival at the pier at Southampton where, after passing through Customs and Immigration, they would board the tender for the trip down the Solent, and thus eventually would enter the side of the liner and be shown to their cabin, and thereafter the French line would take over.

To these instructions Mrs Harris added a vivid memory of an instance when she had been at Waterloo to take a suburban train, and at one of the gates had witnessed what appeared to be a small-sized riot, with people milling and crowding, children shrieking, etc., and inquiring into the nature of this disturbance had been informed that it was merely the departure of the boat-train at the height of the season.

As Mrs Harris’s scheme was outlined to her, even that perpetual prophetess of doom, Mrs Butterfield, outdid herself with tremblings, groans, cries, quiverings, claspings of hands together, and callings upon heaven to witness that the only possible result could be that they would all spend the rest of their natural lives in a dungeon, and she, Mrs Violet Butterfield, would have no part of it. She had agreed to embark upon this hare-brained voyage across an ocean waiting to engulf them, to a land where death lurked at every corner, but not to make disaster doubly sure by beginning the trip with a kidnapping and a stowing away.

Mrs Harris who, once she had what she considered a feasible idea in her head, was not to be turned from it, said, ‘Now, now, Violet - don’t take on so. A stitch in time will help us to cross over those bridges.’ And then with remarkable patience and perseverance managed to overcome practically all her friend’s objections.

Her intrinsic plan was based upon recollections of childhood visits to Clacton-on-Sea with her Mum and Dad, and the outings they used to enjoy on the excursion steamers to Margate, a luxury they occasionally permitted themselves. Poor and thrifty, her folks could manage the price of two tickets, but not three. When time came to pass through the gates and encounter the ticket-taker, little Ada had been taught to detach herself from her parents and, seeking out a large family with five or more youngsters, join up with them until safely through the gates. Experience had taught them in the Sunday crush the harassed ticket-taker would not be able to distinguish whether it was five or six children who

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