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fun to look up the skating clubs everywhere we go? I'm thinking of doing an article for Skating magazine about it. Skating My Way Around the World, or Blades under the Southern Cross, or something like that."
    I answered with dignity that Skating magazine did not pay anything for copy and that I hoped she would never bring up an immoral proposal like that again.
    "I'm not asking you to write the article. I'll do it myself."
    "It's a bad precedent," I answered sulkily. "Start a thing like that and it could lead anywhere. First thing you know I'd have to take a j-b-if you will excuse the expression-and go back to working for a living. You wouldn't want that to happen."
    She did not answer. "Or maybe you would?" I went on, not quite so firmly. "Anyhow, it is absopreposterously out of the question. We can't drag thirty pounds of skates and a bushel of skating costumes around the globe just to skate a few times. If you find any rinks open in the southern hemisphere-which I doubt-we will rent skates and try them. I'll go that far with you. You can even take one skating dress. One."
    "Rented skates," she said quietly, making the words an obscenity.
    "Then don't skate. We live two blocks from one of the best rinks in the world. We are not repeat not spending all this dough just to compare one piece of frozen water with another. Ice is ice in any language."
    "No, it's not. In Spanish it's hielo. I looked it up."
    I withdrew to a previously prepared position. "Look, darling, I had been meaning to talk with you about this. The secret of happy traveling is to travel light. We'll take two bags each, one for each hand. That way we can always move them ourselves if we have to. There is nothing worse than to be stuck out in the middle of a pouring rain with a big stack of baggage and no porters or taxicabs to be had for love or money. And even if you do find a taxi, in a lot of those hot countries the first thing the driver does is size up your luggage. If you've got a lot of it, then you must be rich and fair game; he multiplies the normal charge by the number of your bags."
    "So you tell him firmly you won't pay it."
    "And sit there in the rain? No, if you have just the baggage you can carry, as we will have, you walk off and look for another taximetro. He follows after you and offers you the right price."
    "Robert A., if you think I'm going to show myself to people all over the world in clothes that came out of one bag-and look it-think again. You like to see me nicely dressed. The very first remark you ever made to me was, 'Your slip is showing.' "
    "You can be nicely dressed with just two bags. Pan-American puts out a list that shows you just how to do it."
    "Written by the same chap who tells how to make tasty meals out of left-over scraps, I'll bet."
    "It isn't like dressing here at home. You're not going to be seen by the same people each day, so each outfit is as smart as the first time you wore it."
    "So? We are going to be in that Dutch ship for six weeks. Do you want me to wear the same black dinner dress every evening for forty-two days, not forgetting the Captain's Dinner?"
    I shifted tactically. "Another thing, if you have a lot of luggage, it takes forever to get through customs."
    "Why? It can't take long to mark a chalk mark. I've seen them in New York."
    "Honey, do you know what that chalk mark means?"
    "Should I know?"
    "It means that the customs officer has unpacked everything in it, searched it, and passed it. You have a lot of stuff, tightly packed, and it takes him forever to paw through it."
    "Paw through my clothes?"
    "Of course. That's what he's there for, to search the stuff."
    "But that's silly. Where did you get that idea? When Aunt Lou got back from Europe she just handed the man a list of what she had bought outside the country; he took it and made some chalk marks. It took about thirty seconds."
    I nodded. "So it did. She had declared a reasonable amount, she had her list made out in advance, and she didn't