You may remember the Season, not so very long ago, when Londoners used
to wake up every morning wondering Well Really What Next. A good many
surprising and beautiful things happened during those brief weeks, and
they were all due to the nocturnal efforts of Gypsy, Ginger, and their
friends.
At first Ginger stuck to her pet reform of Unwiring Flowers, and Gypsy
to his of Uncorrugating Iron. Not a night passed without some suburb
having all its roses unmuzzled. Not a night passed without the roof of
some Army Hut or Tennis-Club Pavilion being straightened out by Gypsy’s
flat-iron. The process, of course, exactly doubled the length of the
roof, so that yards used to jut out at either end. The Tennis-Players
were considerably annoyed; and in the Army, Fatigue Duty resolved
itself into sitting on the roof with a pair of curling-tongs, and
crinkling the roofs back to their normal proportions. The soldiers who
had been hair-dressers were the best at it, and some really beautiful
work in Marcel Waving was put in by the experts for the Y.M.C.A. The
Army minded it less than the Sportsmen, for they might just as well
corrugate the iron on the roof as pick up the Woodbine stumps on the
floor. But Gypsy was practically the death of local sport that summer,
all the club-time being occupied in doing up what he had undone
overnight. He gave some trouble, too, to Noncomformists and Sheltered
Cabmen.
But Gypsy didn’t really want to stop sport. He liked sport. He himself
could put such a twist on a serve that it would come back and hit his
partner of its own accord; and in the cricket-field he never hit
anything under Boundaries and Catches at Cover. His Innings consisted
of exactly one of each. At the beginning of his Club Season the Scorer
always made out his analysis in advance to save trouble:
Average
GYPSY 4
it would run. If everyone had played Gypsy’s sort of cricket there
would have been no need to talk of brightening the game. His cricket
was as bright and as brief as a lucifer. It favoured the two-hour
match. So he was really sorry to make the Houndsditch Hatters’ Second
Eleven spend all their practice time in crinkling the pavilion roof.
Also it vexed him to work on the system of Penelope’s Web. Presently he
took to clipping the ends off the roofs after they were straightened.
This checkmated the Cricketers and Tennis-Players, because when they
attempted to re-corrugate the roof there wasn’t enough of it left over
to keep out the weather. So they had to send for some more.
During the days of waiting Gypsy turned the time to account, and ironed
out all the Cabmen’s Shelters on the No. 11 Bus route. But somebody
else was now beginning to make good use of his efforts. An Unknown
Quantity was also mysteriously at work under the moon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account