Godmother nodded. “The Restoration of course meaning the restoring of kings to the English throne. Now Elizabeth died in the year 1603, and Charles the Second was crowned in 1660, so as the London we shall see will only be about sixty years older than it was in the time of Elizabeth, you wouldn’t expect to find it much altered, would you?” “No. Except that I suppose it will be a little bigger?” “Yet during the reign of Charles the Second, London was almost _completely_ changed for a reason you will understand presently,” Godmother returned. “Now before we go back to Restoration days, I want to tell you something about a man who lived in London in the time of Charles the Second. His name was Samuel Pepys. He was educated at that St. Paul’s School we talked about when we looked at some of the great schools that had just begun to flourish in the reign of Elizabeth. Afterwards he went to Cambridge, and then for some years he held posts in the Admiralty,—that is the great office in which the affairs of the Navy are managed. We have passed the street he lived in, many times on our journeys to London Bridge. It is called Seething Lane, and is close to the bridge, and not far from the Monument.” “I remember seeing it,” Betty answered. “Well, he was not a great man, though he was industrious and did his work well. He was vain and stingy, and had a great many petty faults, though on the whole he was lovable and kind-hearted. But we can never think of the days of Charles the Second without thinking of Samuel Pepys, and I’ll tell you why. He had the habit of keeping a diary, and that diary, now printed, is one of the most interesting and amusing books you can imagine. It is also very valuable, because as Pepys was a great gossip, and described everything he did, and everything he saw, and every place he went to, very fully, we seem to know the life of London in his day almost as though we had lived it ourselves.” “Shall we see him?” asked Betty with interest. “We are sure to. He went a great deal to the Palace of Whitehall, so perhaps we shall meet him there. Anyhow I can’t imagine going to London any time between 1660 and 1670 without seeing Samuel Pepys. I think it is he who must take us back to Restoration London.” Godmother went to the Cabinet where the magic talismans were kept, and took out a book. “Here is his ‘Diary,’ Shut your eyes, and I’ll read you what he wrote in it one May, two hundred and sixty years ago. He is recording in his ‘Diary’ how he spent that day, now so far in the past. “‘_To Westminster. In the way meeting many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them, and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging door.... She seemed a mighty pretty creature._’” “Who was ‘pretty Nelly’?” asked Betty, holding the book which Godmother put in her hand in the special “magic” way. “You will see her if you look now.” Betty’s eyes flew open upon a charming scene.