“He’s keeping it for his son, till he gets married,” said the Pub.
“Is he going to get married?” asked Ginger.
“Not as we knows on,” said the Pub.
Ginger finished her shandygaff so hastily that she choked, and ran as fast as she could to the Blacksmith’s, with her mouth full of cheese. Between cheese and breathlessness she was unable to speak when she got there, so she merely leaned against the door waving her hands at the Blacksmith and his Son. They looked round at her. The Blacksmith said, “What d’ye want, missy?” and the Son didn’t say anything. Ginger gulped down the last of her cheese and said, “I want to marry your son.” The Blacksmith said, “He’s tokened to Lizzie Hooker,” and the Son didn’t say anything. Ginger stamped her foot and said, “When?” “Come dinner-time,” said the Blacksmith. The Son said nothing. “There!” said Ginger, “I knew I’d be too late.” And she turned and ran down the hill and took the next train to Sligo. The men went back to their work, and come supper-time the Blacksmith’s Son broke it off with Lizzie Hooker. But by then Ginger was nearly in Wales, which shows how fatal a thing is procrastination.
Gypsy knew this. He never procrastinated. But at that time he and Ginger were strangers, or this narrow squeak would never have happened. Ginger stayed a week in Sligo, went to Abbeyville for another, came back in a hurry because the Ballet was dancing Carnaval on Saturday afternoon, and then ran up to Ilkley for three days. She was next said to have been seen simultaneously in Northamptonshire and Petersfield, but the certain fact is that exactly a month after not marrying the Blacksmith’s Son in Sussex, she was in a boat on the Cam with Gypsy. He had come across her in the Backs five minutes previously, and asked her to go for a row. The next day Gypsy and Ginger got married.
Gypsy and Ginger spent their honeymoon on Hampstead Heath. It lasted from Saturday to Monday, and by great luck the Monday was Whit Monday. So they did the end of the honeymoon in Swings and Roundabouts, and slid several times down a little Spiral Tower, and had gingerbeer and oranges and hokey-pokey, and bought each other a great many beautifully-coloured wedding-presents, such as feathers and streamers and little balls of pink and blue and yellow and green and gold and silver, swinging from elastics, and tin trumpets, and striped cornucopias. And Gypsy came away with sixteen cocoanuts. He felt in great form, because, he said, the cocoanuts that hadn’t been to the barber’s looked exactly like Ginger’s head, and it was too good a chance to be missed. He did have nineteen cocoanuts, but he dropped one in the last Roundabout, very late at night when the flares were lit. It was a Motorcar Roundabout with an automatic Jazz Band in the middle of it that got jazzier and jazzier as the motors got faster and faster. But when Gypsy dropped his cocoanut he got even jazzier than the band, and stood up on the back of his seat and yelled for the thing to stop, and for several rounds had a fierce argument with an attendant, whom he accused, every time he whirled past, of conspiring to rob him of his nut. But all the attendant saw was an occasional lightning-streak of a young man with wild hair and glittering eyes and gesticulating hands, superbly balanced on one foot; and all the attendant heard was, “Nut! nut! nut!” And all the attendant said was, “’E’s fair gawn orf it.” As the motor-jazz simmered down so did Gypsy, and by the time they came to a standstill he realised that he had done the attendant an injustice, so he gave the man his eighteenth cocoanut as a keepsake.
And Ginger won a penknife. She threw a little ring right over it and won it. It was an awful surprise to her, because she never knew she had it in her, but it was an awfuller surprise to the Man with the Rings, because nobody ever did win a penknife. He simply hated losing it. So he offered Ginger anuvver frow, free of charge, if she would give him back the penknife. She was delighted and said, “How generous! oh, but are you sure?” she was so afraid of doing him. The Man with the Rings was quite sure. So they put back the penknife, and Ginger threw her free throw and won it again. Then the Man with the Rings said, “Blarst!” and burst into tears.
Ginger said, “Oh, dear, what is the matter?”
“Well may you arst!” sobbed the Man with the Rings, “an’ me wiv a wife an’ five little ’uns at ’ome.”