THE MISSING PURSE
Early Christmas Day afternoon, we started to Temuco to catch the train back to Santiago. We had one of the four compartments on that long steam locomotived train, which arrived in Santiago the next morning at 10 a.m.
We stepped jauntily into a well worn taxi and started for the Carrera Hotel when Aura May jumped straight up. Where was her purse, her passport, over $300 in U.S. currency, about 3,000 pesos in Chilean money, the ship tickets to Panama, the flying machine tickets to Los Angeles, her hair tinware and other feminine goods and wares too numerous to mention? We got the driver turned around and back. The train was still standing in the shed. I had to watch the baggage to save what we had left. Aura May took off like a teal at Le Pas, Manitoba, five days after opening day. She flew past the gate man like he wasn't there. Gate men seem to know when women mean business. The last I saw, she was headed down the right platform.
To me a long time elapsed. . . Then here she came—with the purse, shoulder sling and all, intact except for a few hundred pesos she, in her gratitude, had scattered to whomsoever would take them.
The porter had promptly taken the purse to his superior. . . If you ever again hear me speak ill of Chilean porters, call my attention to this item of my experience.