Gypsy and Ginger spent their honeymoon on Hampstead Heath. It lasted from Saturday to Monday, and by great luck the Monday was Whit Monday. So they did the end of the honeymoon in Swings and Roundabouts, and slid several times down a little Spiral Tower, and had gingerbeer and oranges and hokey-pokey, and bought each other a great many beautifully-coloured wedding-presents, such as feathers and streamers and little balls of pink and blue and yellow and green and gold and silver, swinging from elastics, and tin trumpets, and striped cornucopias. And Gypsy came away with sixteen cocoanuts. He felt in great form, because, he said, the cocoanuts that hadn’t been to the barber’s looked exactly like Ginger’s head, and it was too good a chance to be missed. He did have nineteen cocoanuts, but he dropped one in the last Roundabout, very late at night when the flares were lit. It was a Motorcar Roundabout with an automatic Jazz Band in the middle of it that got jazzier and jazzier as the motors got faster and faster. But when Gypsy dropped his cocoanut he got even jazzier than the band, and stood up on the back of his seat and yelled for the thing to stop, and for several rounds had a fierce argument with an attendant, whom he accused, every time he whirled past, of conspiring to rob him of his nut. But all the attendant saw was an occasional lightning-streak of a young man with wild hair and glittering eyes and gesticulating hands, superbly balanced on one foot; and all the attendant heard was, “Nut! nut! nut!” And all the attendant said was, “’E’s fair gawn orf it.” As the motor-jazz simmered down so did Gypsy, and by the time they came to a standstill he realised that he had done the attendant an injustice, so he gave the man his eighteenth cocoanut as a keepsake.

And Ginger won a penknife. She threw a little ring right over it and won it. It was an awful surprise to her, because she never knew she had it in her, but it was an awfuller surprise to the Man with the Rings, because nobody ever did win a penknife. He simply hated losing it. So he offered Ginger anuvver frow, free of charge, if she would give him back the penknife. She was delighted and said, “How generous! oh, but are you sure?” she was so afraid of doing him. The Man with the Rings was quite sure. So they put back the penknife, and Ginger threw her free throw and won it again. Then the Man with the Rings said, “Blarst!” and burst into tears.

Ginger said, “Oh, dear, what is the matter?”

“Well may you arst!” sobbed the Man with the Rings, “an’ me wiv a wife an’ five little ’uns at ’ome.”

At least, Ginger thought he said this; in Gypsy’s opinion, when they discussed it later, he said, “Five wives and a little ’un.” Either way they felt very sorry for him. Ginger dried his eyes with a beautiful orange-coloured handkerchief which was Gypsy’s chief wedding-present to her, and Gypsy gave him his seventeenth cocoanut. But the Man With the Rings only looked miserably at the penknife; and at last he offered Ginger free free frows if she’d give it back. But Ginger clutched it. She wanted so much to keep the penknife as a proof, and she knew that luck doesn’t go on forever. The Man with the Rings looked frightfully unhappy, so Gypsy, who could not bear a cloud on his first honeymoon, gave him half-a-crown for the penknife; and everybody was cheerful.

“It’s for you,” said Ginger when they came away. “It’s a wedding-present. I won it for you with the sweat of my own brow.”

“We shan’t have to sweat again for a long time now,” said Gypsy. “Sixteen cocoanuts will be lots to live on for a bit, especially now we’ve got a penknife to eat them with. It’s ripping, darling.”

Gypsy was wrong, however. The penknife wouldn’t rip margarine, much less sixteen cocoanuts. So when they got back to a little room they’d found standing quite empty and longing for them in Well Road, they had supper by the aid of the poker. Then, because they’d no pennies left for the gas-slot, and no lamp, and no candles, Ginger put a match to some shavings in the fireplace so that they could see whether they were taking bites of cocoanut or of cocoanut matting; and as the poker was otherwise engaged, she poked the fire with the penknife, which flared up like a squib and disappeared for ever. And Gypsy and Ginger, who both adored fireworks, said, “Oo—oo—oo!” and clapped their hands, and rolled themselves up on the floor and went to sleep.

Because, as I said before, the room was quite empty.