“What a pity about the monasteries,” Betty said. “They are so beautiful and splendid. It’s awful to think of not seeing them again.” “Yes. You see London now when the Church is all-powerful. The next time you come, its power will be broken, and London will be a Protestant city....” “Where shall we go now, Godmother?” asked Betty as they left the south side of the city, and recrossed London Bridge. “Well, it’s almost time we slipped back into our own day. But before we do that, you shall just have a glimpse of the _Chepe_.” “The _Chepe_? What does _that_ mean?” “Didn’t we drive down Cheapside this morning?” “Yes. I remember it. That busy street near St. Paul’s, was Cheapside.” “And do you remember Bow Church in Cheapside?” “Yes,” said Betty eagerly. “It has a lovely steeple with a dragon on the top. I always remember it because the bells that Dick Whittington heard, were the bells of Bow Church.” [Illustration: THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS] “Well, come and see Cheapside as it looks now at the end of the fourteenth century. It isn’t called Cheapside yet. The people of London call it the _Chepe_, which is an old English word for _market_. The Chepe (_Cheapside_ in our day) is the great market-place of London. We needn’t walk to it. Just shut your eyes and wish yourself there. A magic visit such as this has many advantages. One of them is that we needn’t tire ourselves with walking.” Betty did as she was told, and a second later looked round her. “Oh, Godmother, what a nice place! But it isn’t a bit like _our_ Cheapside. It’s much wider, for one thing—and of course the houses are all different. Oh! it’s lovely.” They stood in a broad open space paved with cobblestones. On either hand there were quaint houses like those in Thames Street, and among them a few much finer and larger, with carved balconies, and coloured and gilded coats of arms on their walls. “Those are the houses of the wealthy merchants,” said Godmother, pointing to the grander buildings. “Do you remember when we were in the car this morning passing a street out of Cheapside called Wood Street?” “With a big tree at the corner? Yes!” “Well, we are standing just about there.” Betty gasped with astonishment. “Oh! how difficult it would be to _imagine_ all this if I wasn’t actually seeing it,” she murmured. Down the middle of the market-place, at intervals, were stone fountains, and close to where she stood (opposite the modern Wood Street), rose a beautiful stone cross. “That’s one of the crosses put up by Edward the First, in memory of his wife, Eleanor. You remember the story? And that church on the right, is Bow Church.” “But it doesn’t look a bit like the Bow Church I know!” “Except for the foundations it’s _not_ the Bow Church we know, but another, built on its ruins. You have to remember that all this market, and in fact _nearly the whole of London_, is going to be swept away by a fire nearly three hundred years later on.”