“He’s one of Elizabeth’s favourites, isn’t he? Oh yes, it was Walter Raleigh who once put down his cloak for the Queen to walk on. What a lovely view over the river he must have from his study.” “That’s York House,” Godmother went on, pointing to the next mansion, “and there lives another famous man of Elizabeth’s day, Sir Francis Bacon. Later on, in the next reign, it will be the home of the great Duke of Buckingham, and there’s still a tiny bit left of it in our own day, which you can see when you turn down out of the Strand to go to Charing Cross Underground Station.” “I know! A big stone gate?” Godmother nodded. “Which of course at that time stood at the edge of the water. It was the Water Gate to the Duke of Buckingham’s palace. But to-day of course we shall not see it, for it isn’t yet built. We’ve passed Somerset House, but——” “Somerset House?” interrupted Betty. “_That’s_ still standing anyway! The front of it is in the Strand, and the back looks over the river, doesn’t it? Why, King’s College is part of Somerset House, and people I know, go there for examinations!” “Yes. Somerset House still stands, and is a fine place, but it has all been rebuilt in quite a different style from the house we’ve just passed.” There was a moment’s silence before Godmother said: “Here is the royal landing-place for Whitehall! The Queen and her train of attendants have gone up the steps into the palace, which, by the way, you mustn’t think of as one big house, but rather as a number of separate buildings, scattered over the ground where now stand all the big Government offices like the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Colonial Office, where, in our day, the business of governing our country is done. Elizabeth’s father, Henry the Eighth, has not long ago added to, and rebuilt much of the palace which he took from his famous minister, Cardinal Wolsey. Whitehall belonged to Wolsey before he fell into disgrace, and King Henry was only too glad to get such a splendid palace. You can see from here, the line of a great hall he added to it. It’s there that some of the masques of which his daughter Elizabeth is so fond, are often acted.” “Masques? What are they?” Betty inquired. “Aren’t we going to see the palace?” she went on in the same breath. “I think we’ll leave the palace till the next of our magic visits to London, when we shall see it at the height of its glory. We can land here though, and sit in this part of the royal garden while I tell you something about the Court Masques.” Betty followed her godmother up some steps from the landing-stage, and sat down beside her on a marble bench behind which ran a yew hedge, shutting off the view of the palace beyond. “Let me see if I can guess where we are now, if we were back in our own time, I mean,” she began. “I suppose this shady walk would be the part of the Victoria Embankment near Westminster Bridge?”