“There really isn’t time, darling. Salmon—”
“Then talk in words of one syllable,” said Ginger. “Now what about salmon?”
“Salmon,” said Gypsy, “is safe. It’s only the Canadians who put it in tins that are iconoclasts about salmon. I don’t see how any pavement picture of the very middlest cut could be better than the real thing, do you?”
Ginger agreed that salmon was safe.
But the P.A. didn’t.
When the following night he asked for a sausage, and Ginger shyly offered him a pink slice of Scotch with a coronet of cucumber all the way round, his eyes dilated. But he shook his head.
“My dear,” he said, “do you know what are the two worst things in life?”
“Not salmon and cucumber, surely?” pleaded Ginger.
“No,” said he. “But not having what you want, and having it.” He put the plate from him. “‘Rather endure those evils’—I can’t argue about it,” he said abruptly, “I only know that if your salmon were one whit more or less delicious than mine, I should never chalk salmon on pavement again. And what would then be left me to do for a living?”
“S’rimps,” said the Rag-and-Bone Man.