“Do look at that pretty nun. How she’s laughing!” exclaimed Betty. “Oh! what a lovely coat!” she cried again, as a handsome young man rode by, gaily and beautifully dressed. “And look at the fat woman with the scarlet stockings, and the enormous hat.... But what a lot of monks and nuns there are, aren’t there?” “Yes,” agreed Godmother, “London is full of them. Everywhere there are great rich monasteries, and some of the monks and nuns are becoming very lazy and neglecting their duties. You may read in the Introduction to the ‘Canterbury Tales’ how Chaucer makes fun of them. Though he doesn’t forget to do honour to those of them who are good,” she added. “Look at that kind-faced priest with the shabby robe. No doubt Chaucer is at this moment planning how he will describe that very man as the good priest, who practises what he preaches.” Betty glanced at the poet again, and wondered what he was thinking. “Let us follow the pilgrims a little way,” Godmother suggested. “Before they actually leave London they are sure to go into some inn to have a meal or to drink wine, and you would perhaps be interested to see what fourteenth-century inns were like?” Betty was more than willing, and glancing back she saw that the quiet-looking, brown-clad poet was following them. “Now we are in Southwark,” Godmother said as they went off the bridge through the gateway under the tower. “Think of Southwark as you saw it this morning! _There_,” she pointed to a meadow golden with buttercups, “ran the railway bridge over which trains were thundering, and where as far as you can see now, there are hedges and woods, if we had walked this morning we should have gone through miles of streets in Bermondsey and Newington.” “Oh! And look at the church!” exclaimed Betty. “It’s the St. Saviour’s we saw this morning, isn’t it? But that beautiful great building near it is a monastery, I suppose?” She remembered the narrow strip of churchyard she had seen a short time previously, and gazed with astonishment at the gardens and broad green lands that now surrounded the church. “Oh, how different. _What_ a pity!” she sighed. “I wish we didn’t live at the time we do, don’t you, Godmother?” “Our times have _some_ advantages,” said Godmother. “We’ll count up our blessings some day. But I agree that we haven’t improved Southwark,” she went on, smiling. “A few houses, but only a few, as you see, are standing on this side of the river in the fourteenth century, and most of these, as you may notice, are inns.” The train of pilgrims was entering the courtyard of one of them at the moment, and soon Betty and Godmother stood in the archway looking round at the quaint old place. “This inn is called the _Tabard_,” Godmother told her. “It is the very one that Chaucer, now, as you observe, talking to the fat landlord, is going to describe as the meeting-place of his pilgrims.”