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whenever she wanted them, Mrs Harris’s slowly accumulating hoard of pounds got themselves translated into American currency. It became an accepted thing week by week, this exchange. Mrs Schreiber likewise paid her in dollars and tipped her in dollars and nobody was any the wiser.
    Slowly but surely over a period of two years the wad of five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills grew in girth until one fresh morning, early in January, counting her hoard and thumbing her bank book, Mrs Harris knew that she was no longer too far away from the realisation of her dream.
    She was well aware that anyone leaving the British Isles to travel abroad must hold a valid British passport, and she consulted Major Wallace as to what was necessary to obtain such a document, receiving explicit information as to where, how, and to whom she must apply in writing.
    ‘Thinking of going abroad?’ he asked with some amazement and no little alarm, since he considered Mrs Harris’s ministrations indispensable to his comfort and well-being.
    Mrs Harris tittered: ‘ ’Oo me? Where would I be going?’ She hastily invented another relative. ‘It’s for me niece. She’s going out to Germany to get married. Nice boy stationed in the Army there.’
    And here you can see how Mrs Harris differentiated between a fib and a lie. A fib such as the above did nobody any harm, while a lie was deliberate, told to save yourself or to gain an unfair advantage.
    Thus a never-to-be-forgotten moment of preparation was the day the instructions arrived from the Passport Office, a formidable blank to be filled in with ‘4 photographs of the applicant 2 inches by 2 inches in size, etc., etc.’
    ‘Whatever do you think,’ Mrs Harris confided to her friend Mrs Butterfield in a state of high excitement, ‘I’ve got to ’ave me photograph tyken. They want it for me passport. You’d better come along and hold me ’and.’
    The one and only time that Mrs Harris had ever faced the camera lens was upon the occasion of her wedding to Mr Harris and then she had the stout arm of that stout plumber to support her during the ordeal.
    That picture in a flower-painted frame now adorned the table of her little flat. It showed Mrs Harris of thirty years ago, a tiny, thin-looking girl whose plain features were enhanced by the freshness of youth. Her hair was bobbed, the fashion of the day, and she wore a white muslin wedding dress tiered somewhat in the manner of a Chinese pagoda. In her posture there was already some hint of the courage and independence she was to display later when she became widowed. The expression on her face was one of pride in the man she had captured and who stood beside her, a nice-looking boy somewhat on the short side, wearing a dark suit, and with his hair carefully plastered down. As was becoming to his new statushe looked terrified. And thereafter nobody had ever again troubled to reproduce Mrs Harris nor had she so much as thought about it.
    ‘Won’t it cost a packet?’ was Mrs Butterfield’s reaction to the dark side of things.
    ‘Ten bob for ’arf a dozen,’ Mrs Harris reported. ‘I saw an ad in the paper. I’ll give you one of the extra ones if you like.’
    ‘That’s good of you, dearie,’ said Mrs Butterfield and meant it.
    ‘Ow Lor’.’ The exclamation was torn from Mrs Harris as she was suddenly riven by a new thought. ‘Ow Lor’,’ she repeated, ‘if I’m going to ’ave me photograph tyken, I’ll ’ave to ’ave a new ’at.’
    Two of Mrs Butterfield’s chins quivered at the impact of this revelation. ‘Of course you will, dearie, and that
will
cost a packet.’
    Mrs Harris accepted the fact philosophically and even with some pleasure. It had been years since she had invested in a new hat. ‘It can’t be ’elped. Just as well I’ve got some of the stuff.’
    The pair selected the following Saturday afternoon, invading the King’s Road to accomplish both errands beginning, of course, with the choice of the hat.