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:

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.

One night, as Ginger was going home bent nearly double under a great load of rusty wires after a busy hour among the lilies of Sloane Square, she met Gypsy, flat-iron in hand, staring at one of his flattened rooms like a man in a trance.

“What are you looking at?” asked Ginger.

“That!” said Gypsy, pointing upward.

She shifted her faggot and gazed at the roof, which bore this legend in luminous white paint:

THERE IS NO TRUTH IN THE RUMOUR THAT
THIS UGLY IF UTILITARIAN ROOF IS TO
BE REPLACED WITH A BEAUTIFUL THATCH

“Why did you do that?” asked Ginger.

“I didn’t,” said Gypsy.

“Who did, then?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Gypsy.

It was only the beginning. Soon his other roofs began to be adorned with similar statements. A shelter in Kensington inquired:

WHO HAS BEEN CIRCULATING THE FICTION
THAT OLD WEATHER-STAINED TILES ARE
THE LATEST FASHION FOR CABMEN?
THEY ARE NOT!

And a Canteen in Putney asserted:

THE REPORT IS ABSOLUTELY UNFOUNDED
THAT BEFORE LONG THIS UNPREPOSSESSING
HUT WILL RESEMBLE THE LOG-CABINS OF
THE EARLY SETTLERS

These suggestions, and others equally attractive, were gradually being negatived on iron roofs in every quarter of London.

If Gypsy and Ginger were mysteries to the Cricket-Clubs and Flower-sellers, the unknown Luminous Painter was a mystery to them. But at last they discovered him.

They had taken half an hour off one night to look at the pattern of the moon on the river, and they found him standing in the middle of Westminster Bridge. He was very tall and lean, and wore a tight frock-coat that was quite a good green. It had once been rather a poor black. His soft felt hat was also green, and even he did not know what its first colour was. When they caught sight of him he was engaged in removing the hat from his head with an exquisite gesture, and bowing right and left with an unexampled grace. But for themselves there was nobody else on the bridge, yet he performed his courtly salute again and again, north and south, east and west. His deportment was as expressive as it was beautiful; it expressed deference without humility, airiness without impudence, and it paid a compliment not only to the recipient, but to the executor, of the bow.

“What are you doing?” cried Ginger, advancing with an involuntary curtsey.

The individual almost swept the ground with his hat.

“Madam,” he said, sweetly, “I am Bowing to the Circumstances.”

“What Circumstances?” inquired Ginger.

“My own Circumstances, madam. They require it of me frequently. They require it, alas! of many people. But it is one of the Lost Accomplishments of the age. One of the many. These things were once done with a grace——!”

He dusted and replaced his hat. “They stand saluted!” he said.

“I don’t believe that Circumstances which require bowing to ought to be saluted,” objected Ginger. “Why do you bow to them?”

“In acknowledgment, dear madam,” said the shabby gentleman, “that I am not what I was.”

“What were you?” asked Ginger.

“A Professor, madam.”

“And what are you?” asked Gypsy.

“At the moment, sir, I am Contradictor of Rumours.”

“You contradict them on my roofs!” cried Gypsy.

“I have that honour, sir,” said the ex-Professor.