Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/195

 his manager having attended to that. Our trunks were below decks, but our suitcases—"boxes" as they call 'em in the United Kingdom—had been forwarded ahead and were still on the dock. We quickly identified them and Mike shooed us up the gangplank, telling us he'd bring our hand luggage along as there were no porters in sight. At first Hazel strenuously objected, on the grounds that Miguel was trying to put over a fast one. She informed me in a loud aside that Mike was probably a clever crook who had framed our meeting and everything else in order to abduct our suitcases. She said she'd as soon put him in charge of something worth money as she'd put a rabbit in charge of a leaf of cabbage!

However, I managed to chase her protestingly aboard, telling the obliging Mike to do his stuff and make it snappy.

Hazel's flock of hat-boxes caused all the excitement, and really within the next few minutes there was enough of that commodity to satisfy the most exacting! A shopper by birth, Hazel has attended all the sales in the world except the one Columbus took, and in Paris she just ran wild. The perspiring Michael was forced to make two trips with Hazel's baggage and just as he raced across the pier with his second armful of millinery the dear old gangplank was being drawn in. Honestly, from then on it was all slapstick, lacking