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

champagne with the caviar, and Vosne Romanée with the fowl, while an Yquem decorated the chocolate cake.
    Mrs Harris ate for the week before, for this, and the next as well. There had never been a meal like it before and probably never would again. Her eyes gleamed with delight as she crowed: ‘Lumme, if there’s anything I like it’s a good tuck in.’
    ‘The night without is heavenly,’ said M. Fauvel, his eyes meltingly upon the sweet, well-fed-pussy-cat face of Natasha, ‘perhaps afterwards we will let Paris show herself to us—’
    ‘Ooof!’ grunted Mrs Harris, stuffed to her wispy eyebrows. ‘You two go. I’ve ’ad a day to end all days. I’ll just stay ’ome ’ere and do the dishes and then get into me bed and try not to wake up back in Battersea.’
    But now, a feeling of restraint and embarrassment seemed suddenly to descend upon the two young people and which Mrs Harris in her state of repletion failed to notice. Had his guest consented to go, M. Fauvel was thinking, allwould have been different, and the exuberance of the party plus the glorious presence of Natasha might have been maintained. But, of course, without this extraordinary person the thought of his showing Dior’s star model the sights of Paris suddenly seemed utterly ridiculous.
    To Natasha, Paris at night was the interior of a series of smoky
boîtes
, or expensive nightclubs, such as Dinazard, or Shéhérazade, and of which she was heartily sick. She would have given much to have been enabled to stand on the Grand Terrasse of Le Sacré-Cœur, under the starry night, and look out over these stars reflected in the sea of the light of Paris - and in particular with M. Fauvel at her side.
    But with Mrs Harris’s plumping for bed there seemed no further excuse for her presence. She had already intruded too much into his privacy. She had shamelessly pried into his quarters with broom and duster, seen the squalor in his sink, permitted herself the almost unthinkable intimacy of washing out his bath tub, and, in her exuberance, the even more unpardonable one of bathing in it herself.
    She became suddenly overcome with confusion, and blushing murmured: ‘Oh, no, no, no. I cannot, it is impossible. I am afraid I have an appointment. I must be going.’
    M. Fauvel accepted the blow which was expected. ‘
Ah
,
yes
’
he thought, ‘you must return, little butterfly, to the life you love best. Some count, marquis, duke, or even prince will be waiting for you. But at least I have had this one night of bliss and I should be content.
’ Aloud he murmurmured ‘Yes, yes, of course, Mademoiselle has been too kind.’
    He bowed, they touched hands lightly and their glances met and for a moment lingered. And this time the sharp knowing eyes of Mrs Harris twigged: ‘Oho,’ she said to herself, ‘
so that’s ’ow it is. I should have went with them
.’
    But it was too late to do anything about it now and the fact was that she really was too stuffed to move. ‘Well, good night, dears,’ she said loudly and pointedly, and tramped up the stairs, hoping that with her presence removed they might still get together on an evening out. But a moment later she heard the front door opened and shut and then the clatter as the motor of Natasha’s Simca came to life. Thus ended Mrs Ada ’Arris’s first day in a foreign land and amidst a foreign people.
    The following morning, however, when M. Fauvel proposed that in the evening he show her something of Paris, Mrs Harris lost no time in suggesting that Natasha be included in the party. Flustered, M. Fauvel protested that sightseeing was not for such exalted creatures as Mile Natasha.
    ‘Garn,’ scoffed Mrs Harris. ‘What makes you think she’s different from any other young girl when there is an ’andsome man about? She’d ’ave gone with you last night if you ’ad ’ad the brains to ask ’er. You just tel ’er I said she was to come.’
    That morning the two of them encountered briefly upon the