WE CANNOT IMAGINE WHENCE THE FABRICATION AROSE THAT ORPHANS ARE TO WEAR LIBERTY HATS THIS SUMMER This idea was presented daily to London just at the moment when she had begun to digest the possibility of a substitute for Corrugated Iron. Indeed, some rather beautiful timbered roofs were already under way in Hackney, and Turnham Green was discussing the relative merits of thatch _versus_ tiles. Whitechapel too had cottoned to the notion of Hanging Gardens. The Cabmen’s Shelters were becoming positive bowers, as the ex-Professor reported with great satisfaction at the Weatherhouse, where everybody assembled regularly at daybreak to discuss the next night’s plan of action. Ginger was overjoyed. “What a delightful sight it must be,” she said, “to see the Cabmen hanging in the Gardens, as they drink their gingerbeer.” “And dream of Babylon,” added Gypsy. “_Quite_ so,” said the Taxi-Man. The scheme succeeded from the first. Ginger and Rags had not much trouble with the Orphans. They had not even to wait for Public Opinion; the Orphan Asylums themselves soon saw no reason why the above Fabrication should remain one. On the day the Orphans began to troop through London in graceful hats with coloured scarves and happy faces, the Public was confronted everywhere with this announcement (Gypsy’s): NO! IT IS _NOT_ TRUE THAT THE MEMBERS OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE ARE GIVING A BEANFEAST TO ALL THE POOR CHILDREN IN BETHNAL GREEN This took more doing. But nine days of incessant repudiation got on the Members’ nerves. They began to find it difficult to look strangers in the eye. They began to observe how studiously their friends refrained from references to Bethnal Green in their presence. They began to feel that they were shabby fellows. And hang it all! _why_ wasn’t it true that they were giving a Beanfeast to the Children of Bethnal Green? why _shouldn’t_ they give a Beanfeast if they wanted to? In the end Bethnal Green got such a Beanfeast as it had never dreamed of in all its young life. After this the surprises came fast and thick. Under the obstinate influence of contradiction, the owners of almond and pink may trees in red-brick houses transferred these voluntarily to the front gardens of dwellers in white or grey stone houses. The aesthetic advantage would not be visible till next spring, but London was beginning to be endowed with a sense of vision. There were also immediate reforms in the front gardens, whose beds defied at last the rigid and time-dishonoured conscription of marguerite, geranium, and lobelia. It was the dawn of a floral era wilder, more exquisite, and much more experimental.