The following morning Doctor Hollister, accompanied by his young charges, set out for Whitehall carrying a letter from Lady Willoughby to Sir Francis Walsingham. The royal palace was at the extreme western end of London, whilst the Swan Inn stood hard by New Gate, at the eastern extremity, so that in order to reach their destination the travelers had to traverse the full extent of the city. A citizen of London at that time, having such a distance to cover, would most likely have taken a wherry at one of the many water stairs, where numbers of such boats were in waiting at all hours of the day and night. Jack and Peregrine, eager as they were to see the sights of the metropolis, would not hear of anything but walking and so the party set out at an early hour, taking their way along Cheapside, or the Cheap as it was then called. Everything they saw was novel to the boys, neither of whom had ever been in a town larger than Lynn. The gable roofs and projecting upper stories of the houses were much like what they were accustomed to at home, but they had seldom seen one of three stories and here were many rising to four and five. In the narrow side streets which they passed, the dwellings approached so closely that persons sitting at their upper windows might easily converse with their neighbors across the way, or even shake hands with them by leaning out. Before almost every house hung a painted board suspended from an iron bracket, similar to the sign of the “D’Eresby Arms” displayed by the village tavern at Willoughby. For a moment the boys thought that they must be in a town full of inns and Doctor Hollister was mightily amused by the puzzled expression with which they looked from one to another of the crude and curious pictures. The explanation was simple enough when the tutor made it. In the reign of Elizabeth the simple device of numbers to distinguish the different houses of a street had not yet been thought of and so one saw all manner of things pictured and hung over the entrances. There were angels, dragons, castles, mountains, Turks, bears, foxes, birds, books, suns, mitres, ships, and in fact every conceivable kind of object. So, a man wishing to indicate his place of abode might say: “I lodge with the widow Toy, at the sign of the _Bell_ in Paule’s Churchyard” and, since there was at the time a veritable widow Toy, living in a house on the east side of the churchyard and distinguished by the sign of a Bell, who doubtless took in lodgers when favorable opportunity offered, it is not impossible that one or another of the acquaintances made by our party during their stay in London uttered precisely such a remark to them. As our friends passed along the street, apprentices standing in front of their master’s shops invited their patronage or made saucy comments upon their appearance for, although they were dressed in their best clothes, it was easy to see that a country tailor had fashioned their garments.