“No, she wants you alone. She’s sending her car to fetch you to-morrow at eleven o’clock. Your father and I will go to see her another time.” “I wish you were coming. I don’t know her, and I don’t want to be there all day alone with her,” grumbled Betty. “What will there be to do?” “You’ll find she’ll provide plenty to do,” laughed her father. “Mind you don’t tell her though, how much you dislike London!” he added in his teasing voice. “Why?” asked Betty. “Because your godmother loves it. She’s a great authority on London. What she doesn’t know about it, isn’t worth knowing. It’s quite uncanny. I wish she’d write a book about it.” “I can’t think how any one _can_ love London,” Betty declared. “Such a horrid, big, ugly, _dull_ place. I shall never, never like it!” * * * * * Godmother’s little car duly came round next morning, and after a drive, Betty found herself in a tiny room, in a tiny house, in a tiny street close to Westminster Abbey, seated opposite to a very handsome old lady. “I’m sorry my godchild doesn’t like London,” this old lady remarked suddenly, in the midst of a conversation about something else. Betty blushed and looked uncomfortable. She felt shy of her godmother who, as she had always heard, was very clever but “eccentric”—a word she thought meant different from other people. “It’s all so confusing and noisy and there are such lots of ugly houses,” she began apologetically. “And I _do_ miss the lovely country and our beautiful garden,” she added with tears in her voice. “Of course you do,” said Godmother sympathetically. “But as it’s a pity to hate the place you have to live in, I’m going to make you think London the most fascinating town in the world.” She spoke confidently, and just as confidently Betty said to herself, “You’ll never do _that_.” “You think it’s ugly, don’t you?” Godmother inquired. “Well, so it is—in parts.” [Illustration: SHE WAS BEGINNING TO THINK SHE LIKED HER GODMOTHER] “Oh, it’s not _all_ ugly,” Betty hastened to allow. “This little street is awfully pretty—and so quiet. It’s like a street in a country town. You can forget you’re in London. It’s a very old street, isn’t it?” She was forgetting her shyness and beginning to think she liked her godmother. She certainly liked the look of her. Godmother Strangeways was dressed in a way which Betty described to herself as “nicely old-fashioned.” She had snow-white curls fastened back behind her ears with tortoiseshell combs, and the ample-flowered silk dress she wore was, as her godchild decided, “just right” for the small white-panelled room with its old furniture and tall narrow cabinets filled with all sorts of curious things. “Old?” repeated her godmother. “It’s about two hundred years old, and that, as London goes now, _is_ rather ancient. But it’s new compared with the age of London itself. What is two hundred years compared with nearly two thousand?” “Is London as old as _that_?”