“The children are right when they say London Bridge will last for ages long,” Godmother remarked. “It lasted more than six hundred years—almost to our own time. My Grandfather, for instance, Betty, was born the year _this_ Bridge upon which we are standing, was pulled down, and the one you saw this morning, built.” But Betty’s eyes were still fixed on the children who at intervals in their game ran to offer their bunches of flowers to the passers-by, shouting “May Day! May Day!” Presently one little girl with a pretty voice, began to sing (in words which were nearly, though not altogether, like the English of our own day) a little song which, written down, was this: “Summer is icumen in; Lhude sing cuccu! Groweth sed, and bloweth med, And springeth the wude nu— Sing cuccu!” It was easy to put this into modern English, and Betty knew what it meant: “Summer is a-coming in; Loud sings cuckoo! Groweth seed, and bloweth mead, And springeth the wood new. Sing cuckoo!” “That’s the first verse of a song that is more than a hundred years old even in this year 1388 to which we’ve gone back,” said Godmother. “Yet you can understand it pretty well, can’t you? It shows how near to the language we speak to-day, the speech of the fourteenth century is growing.” “Yes. And isn’t it lovely for those children to hear the cuckoo and pick flowers just on the other side of London Bridge? Oh, I wish the country came right up to the City now—like this,” sighed Betty, nodding towards the fields and woods that made a green belt close behind the wall. “Godmother!” she exclaimed suddenly, pointing to a sort of castle near the river bank. “There’s something I know! Why, surely it’s the Tower of London? Only there’s not so much of it as there is now,” she added. “Yes, it’s the Tower right enough—three hundred years old already in 1388, and eight hundred years old in our own time. But now, my dear, before you get too distracted by all you’re seeing and hearing, I’m going to take you in here to talk history for a few minutes.” Betty followed her into the porch of the chapel on the Bridge, where they sat down on a bench out of sight of all the gay life outside. “We left London,” Godmother began, “empty and deserted, with a group of our Saxon ancestors whom we may call _English_ people, standing uncertainly outside the walls built round the city by the departed Romans. What happened next?” “Those English people settled in London, and in time made it alive and busy again.” Godmother nodded. “And what became of the _British_ who used to live here?” “They were driven West, into Wales, and are the Welsh people now.” “Yes. And then?”