They've fallen for Featherlooms the way an Eskimo takes to gum-drops.
My letter of credit is all shot to pieces, but it was worth it. They
make you pay a separate license fee in each province, and South America
is just one darn province after another. If they'd lump a peddler's
license for $5,000 and tell you to go ahead, it would be cheaper.
I landed Pages y Hernandez by a trick. The best of it is the man I
played it on saw the point and laughed with me. We North Americans
brag too much about our sense of humor.
I thought ten years on the road had hardened me to the most fiendish
efforts of a hotel chef. But the food at the Grande here makes a
quarter-inch round steak with German fried look like Sherry's latest
triumph. You know I'm not fussy. I'm the kind of woman who, given her
choice of ice cream or cheese for dessert, will take cheese. Here,
given my choice, I play safe and take neither. I've reached the point
where I make a meal of radishes. They kill their beef in the morning
and serve it for lunch. It looks and tastes like an Ethiop's ear. But
I don't care, because I'm getting gorgeously thin.
If the radishes hold out I'll invade Central America and Panama. I've
one eye on Valparaiso already. I know it sounds wild, but it means a
future and a fortune for Featherlooms. I find I don't even have to
talk skirts. They're self-sellers. But I have to talk honesty and
packing.
How did you hit it off with Ella Sweeney? Haven't seen a sign of Fat
Ed Meyers. I'm getting nervous. Do you think he may have exploded at
the equator?