I’ll say this for Herbert Hudson. When I told him I needed four hundred dollars to fly to Europe and help my sister with her new baby, he didn’t ask any silly questions, like why couldn’t I sail instead, and when would I return. He wrote me a check and wished me bon voyage, then expressed his hope that the agency would remain a going concern in my absence.

That was Saturday afternoon at his place. By Sunday afternoon at five o’clock, I’m safely belted into my seat on the Pan Am Strato Clipper transatlantic service, scheduled to stop in Boston before continuing across the ocean to Paris and then to Rome. On my lap, the Sunday paper features a photograph of our party at the Palmetto Club on the front of the society page, in which Miss Barbara Kingsley is singled out as “the up-and-coming model in New York these days.” I fed that caption myself to my old pal Joan on the social beat, and it gives me immense satisfaction—it always does—to see my words repeated back to me in sincere black and white.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been inside one of those new double-decker Boeing Stratocruisers, but I can’t recommend them enough. For one thing, they’re fast. We lift off from Idlewild bang on schedule at five P.M., and an hour later we descend from a thin layer of clouds to land in Boston to take on a few more passengers. You hardly even notice the change in altitude because they pressurize the cabin to sea level, and the noise of those four giant Pratt & Whitney propeller engines is no more than a droning annoyance. We land with scarcely a bump and roll to a magnificent stop near the terminal. The seating’s all first class, as it should be, and I paid extra for one of those sleeping berths up front, since we won’t land in Paris until the following afternoon and God knows I need a few decent hours of shut-eye. I settle back in my seat and peer idly out the window at the five passengers preparing to board. There’s a young couple that looks as if they’re headed on their honeymoon, bless them, all pink and bright the way you set off on adventures when you’re just a baby. A couple of dour businessmen in pin-striped suits and fedoras, not entering into the spirit of things at all. A grand dame speaks in an animated way to the head stewardess, telling her exactly how to do her job.