“They had a great deal to do with them—later on. For one thing, as you ought to remember, they converted them to Christianity.” “Oh yes, of course. St. Augustine came from Rome, didn’t he, and taught the English to be Christians? But that was a long time afterwards.” “When we see London again, it will be a Christian city once more, just as it was when you and I looked down upon it from the Roman fortress.” “Only the people in it will be _English_—instead of British and Roman,” said Betty. “Oh, Godmother, when shall we see it the ‘magic’ way again?” “All in good time,” was Godmother’s reply, as she looked at her watch. “I shall just have time to show you one little bit of Roman London which remains to this day just where the Romans left it,” she added. “Not in a museum then?” “No. It’s in the very midst of London, at the back of a modern hotel. You shall see it first, and I’ll tell you what I can about it, afterwards.” “Stop at Strand Lane, close to Aldwych Tube Station in the Strand,” was Godmother’s direction to the chauffeur. They were soon there, and Betty wonderingly followed the old lady down a winding, narrow road between houses, till she stopped before an ordinary-looking back-door, near which a board hung, with the words _Roman Bath_ upon it. In another moment Betty was in a vaulted room, gazing down at what seemed to be a little swimming-bath. It was paved and lined with marble slabs, but these did not reach quite to the top, and a rim of ancient bricks was visible. “Once upon a time, two thousand years ago, perhaps,” said Godmother, “there was a Roman villa on this spot, and here is the very bath belonging to it! Under those steps that go down into the bath, there is a spring of water, constantly bubbling up—the same spring that filled it in Roman days.” “And Roman people bathed here ages ago!” exclaimed Betty. “It seems wonderful, doesn’t it? But there is the bath that they built nearly two thousand years ago. The water that fills it, comes from a stream forming a well, which in the Middle Ages was called Holy Well. Only a very few years ago there was a street over there, on the other side of the Strand, called Holywell Street, because it was built over the old well.” [Illustration] “It’s awfully interesting to see something Roman that’s _not_ in a Museum,” observed Betty. “And now I can so easily imagine the sort of villa that was here,” she added. “It had gardens round it where all these houses go down to the river, and the people who lived in it, saw only fields and forests, and swampy land where now there are miles and miles of streets and London houses. Oh, it _is_ wonderful to think about!” But Godmother was again consulting her watch, and in a moment or two Betty was being driven in the car back to her home in Chelsea. II The Middle Ages THE LONDON OF DICK WHITTINGTON