“Is there now?” said the Taxi-Man; while Ginger exclaimed, “What do _you_ know about it, Gypsy. You might have told me!” The two men looked steadily at each other, and then they shook their heads. “Let that be, missy,” said the Taxi-Man; “it’s a man’s job. To get on. There were dragons too, and a giant or so. One by one I cleared ’em out.” “Oh, but why?” protested Ginger. “To make London safe to live in, missy.” “But it _was_ safe,” said Ginger, “for the giants and dragons.” “Ah, it wouldn’t do for us discoverers to take account of the natives,” said the Taxi-Man. “Once they’re discovered, the natives must go. It’s one of the rules, missy. Them giants and dragons was a danger.” “To whom?” asked Ginger. “To the Picadilly Flower-Girls,” said the Taxi-Man, looking like Saint George’s great-grandfather. “Oh well,” said Ginger grudgingly. “But I must say London doesn’t seem half the place it was.” “London’s all right,” said the Taxi-Man. “You can’t kill the nature of a place as easy as all that. No, not even by putting white men in the place of green ones, and taxis in the place of hansoms.” “That must have been a great shock to you,” observed Gypsy. “Yes, in a way it were. And a greater to Snow-Flame. We’d been reared on romance, d’ye see. We _were_ romance, so to speak. It were all properly defined in those early days. On the one rank the Four-Wheels, on the other the Hansoms. They stood for safety, we for danger. The Growlers for Mrs. Grundy, Us for the Quixotes. Everyone knew what we were then, but who’s to know now? Whether you’re one old lady going to her solicitor’s to make her will, or nine young men on Boatrace Night, you just say ‘Taxi!’ Democracy, that’s what it is, and you can’t stop it.” He emptied his cup into his saucer, and drank it at a draught. “Well,” he said, “I must be taking my fare home.” “Have you got a fare waiting all this time?” asked Ginger. “What a lot of twopences!” “This fare don’t pay no tuppences,” said the Taxi-Man. “I takes him a ride round London for nothing, every fine night after working-hours. P’raps you’d like to see him?” Gypsy and Ginger went with him to the Tube corner, and there was the taxi with the hood thrown back. Doubled up inside, as clever as a jigsaw, sat a very old red-and-white horse. “There you are, missy,” said the Taxi-Man, “Snow-Flame! the Most Marvellous Trick Horse of This or Any Age. Winner of the Derby in----” “What year?” asked Gypsy. “Winner of the Derby,” repeated the Taxi-Man. “We’ll leave it at that.” “Why do you take him for rides in the taxi?” asked Gypsy.