“Ah,” said Mrs. Green. “But it’s come and go with balloons.”
“I know,” sighed the Pavement Artist. “They come and they go like our dreams.”
“They don’t do nothing of the sort,” said Mrs. Green. “They come and they go like our dinners. But while they’re there, there they are. Dreams don’t neither come nor go. I’ve no patience with dreamers.—What’s yours, Tonio?” She had a great stock now, and was nearly at the bottom of the bowl.
“An orange, eef the Signora pleases,” said the Hokey-Pokey Man, “to reminda me my native land.”
Mrs. Green blew him an orange balloon and said as she gave it to him, “There’s all the orange-groves of Italy in that, Tonio. You, Rags?”
“A dimond one,” said Rags, and she blew him a white balloon as clear as glass. “What’s inside there,” she told Rags, “would make an African Millionaire take to Abyssinian Pearls in sheer despair.”
For the Lavender and Strawberry Girls she blew their own colours, telling the one that she now possessed enough lavender to sweeten all the laundries in London, and the other sufficient strawberries to feed the House of Commons at tea through a whole summer. The Crossing Sweeper asked for a green one, because grass needs no sweeping except by the wind, and he got one as green as the dome of Amberley on the South Downs. Jeremy chose copper, and the Balloon Woman assured him that all the slot-machines in England held less than he when he had it, like a fat brown purse, in his hands. Everybody had something blown from the Balloon Woman’s bowl. Gypsy had two, one as blue as night and one as blue as day, because he loved all the time there is, and blue beyond all the colours there are.
But when Mrs. Green turned at last to Ginger and asked her what one she’d have, Ginger, who was always as immoderate as a child, pointed up in the sky and said, “I’ll have that one, please.”
“What a nuisance you are,” said Mrs. Green. “But I suppose you must have it, or you’ll be crying for it. I expect it can be managed from Nelson’s shoulder. Just hand me your pick, Rags.”
And this surprising woman began to mount the steps of the Column, pick in hand. But she had got no further than the lions when a little voice cried through the night,