“Why not?” said the Taxi-Man. “Haven’t we always had our nights, him and me? Didn’t we discover London together, bit by bit, under many a full moon? Ah, missy, the fairy-tales we could tell you of the Castle that Jack Built, and of another one built by an Elephant, and then again of the End of the World, which we run across one night by pure accident in Chelsea. And though times change, shall we have no more London Nights? Taxis be blowed! Watch this.” He undid the cab door, and Snow-Flame undid himself and got out. Then the Taxi-Man pulled out a concertina and played _The Maiden’s Prayer_, and Snow-Flame waltzed entrancingly all round Trafalgar Square and died at Ginger’s feet. Gypsy swears that after this he turned a somersault and climbed the Nelson Column, but Ginger was weeping as she used to weep at the end of Lord George Sanger’s Circus, so she missed it. When she wiped her eyes the Taxi-Man and Snow-Flame had gone home. [Illustration: GYPSY AND GINGER’S FRIENDS 3, 4, 5: JEREMY, RAGS, AND TONIO] One night after a very hot day, when the moon was at her roundest, an unusual number of Gypsy and Ginger’s friends turned up at the Weatherhouse, because everybody who was awake in London had come to dip his head in the fountains. What made Trafalgar Square still more crowded was that They had been doing something to it during the day, and had roped off the bit that wasn’t quite done, and left a little man in a box inside it--“Like a Magician in his Magic Circle,” said Gypsy. “I wonder if he’d let me in to see him do tricks,” mused Ginger. “It mightn’t be safe, darling. Once inside the Circle----” “It’s not really a circle, it’s a square,” said Ginger, “and you can always get out of a square because of the cracks in the corners. It’s only rings there’s no getting out off.” “I shouldn’t risk it, though,” said Gypsy. “And here comes Jeremy and Rags for their sausages.” Jeremy was the Penny Hawker. He came up with his black hair streaked like dripping seaweed all over his face, and Ginger gave him a towel. When he’d done with it he passed it on to Rags, whose hair was nondescript and tufty, and looked, after its dip, like wet fur. Rags was the Rag-and-Bone Man. He was himself all rags and bones. Ginger used to give him double portions to make him fatter, and she patched his rags with lovely bits of her old frocks, so that his knees and elbows and other places had unexpected moments of bright chintzes, and butcher-blue linen, and emerald green cloth, and orange silk. But he never got any fatter, and the holes kept coming in new places. He walked about all day with a bag and a long stick with a little fork on the end, seeking for treasure-trove in the London streets. At night he would open his bag and show Ginger his findings, about which she was always very excited; it was usually more trove than treasure, but it pleased Rags greatly when she praised his cleverness.