Ginger nodded. “She’s seen everywhere,” explained Gypsy apologetically.
“So have I—in Oxford Street. It was years and years ago. You sat in a pretend railway carriage for twopence, and the floor rocked, and a man turned a handle to make the sound of wheels, and another one yodelled while a panorama of mountains and waterfalls whirled past the carriage window.” The Pavement Artist’s chin sank on his breast. “But I know,” he whispered, “that it’s not like that really, neither the salmon nor the mountains. They are not even like my pictures of them.”
“What are they like?” asked Ginger, filling his teacup.
“They are like my dreams of them,” said the P.A., “they are like what I feel when I do the pictures. And I only do the best parts. I do middle cuts of Scotch. I know the loch my salmon was caught in, I know the thrill of the angler as he hooks, plays, and lands it, yes, and the thrill of the fish. I have seen it come down in spate——”
“What’s spate?” said Ginger. There were lots of words she didn’t know.
“Sh!” said Gypsy putting his finger on her mouth, for the P.A. was wandering in a world apart.
“Sometimes,” he murmured, “I do it raw, sometimes cooked. When it is raw the blue and silver scales of the skin are more exquisite; but when it is cooked there are thin slices of cucumber with seeds visible in their cool transparent centres. Have you ever felt the beauty of design in the heart of a cucumber?—Once I surrounded the king of fish with a thick layer of mayonnaise.” His nostrils inflated slightly. “And Switzerland!”
“Yes, Switzerland?” repeated Ginger softly. His way of saying it diffused glamour over a country which on the whole had bored her.
“Switzerland! the awful mountains piercing the sapphire with their silver pinnacles—earth’s knives thrust into heaven’s bosom! The cows with their tinkling bells leaping from crag to crag! The crimson sunsets, the purple nights! The still lagoons with their gondolas, the Northern lights, the white palaces——”
“But,” said Ginger.