In place of the ordinary-looking street of Drury Lane, leading at one end into the Strand, she saw a road lined with gabled dwellings, rather like the old houses still left over Staple Inn in Holborn. The houses were not very close together, and slips of garden with trees in them, gave the “lane” a countrified look. A group of girls wearing muslin caps, short skirts and frilled aprons, and carrying milk-pails slung from their shoulders, came dancing down the road to the music played on a fiddle by a man who walked in front of them. From the milk-pails hung garlands of bluebells and cowslips, and some of the girls carried on their heads instead of pails, little pyramids of silver plates adorned with ribbons and flowers. Opposite to where Betty and her godmother found themselves standing, leaning in the door of one of the gabled houses, was a pretty, merry-looking little creature, who had evidently only just got up, for she wore a flowered bed-jacket over her short skirt, and a night-cap trimmed with pink ribbons. “That’s ‘pretty witty Nelly,’” said Godmother. “Nell Gwynne, the famous actress. She often plays at Drury Lane Theatre, lower down the road, and the King greatly admires her.” “Why, there was a play acted in London not very long ago called _Sweet Nell of Old Drury_, wasn’t there?” Betty exclaimed. “Mother was talking about it the other day.” “Yes, a modern play with ‘sweet Nell’ as heroine. Well, there she is. And this is ‘Old Drury’ where she lives.” Just at the moment, the milkmaids and the fiddler stopped before Nell Gwynne’s house, and began to sing. “London, to thee I do present The merry month of May”— Betty heard these words, but the rest of the song was drowned by the loud music of the fiddle, and the laughter of the girls, in which the charming little actress joined as they came crowding round her to take the coins she distributed right and left. “If you look round,” said Godmother, “you will see Samuel Pepys, who is a great admirer of pretty Nelly, watching this little scene.” Betty turned her head, and saw a fat-faced, good-natured, rather conceited-looking man grandly dressed in a black satin coat with silver buttons, huge sleeves made of fine white lawn, a lace cravat, and a wig with long curls. A sword in a scabbard hung at his side, and he carried a tall gold-mounted cane. “He is very gorgeous because he is going on to Court—to the Palace of Whitehall,” said Godmother. “But _we_ will follow the milkmaids to the Maypole.” “The Maypole? How lovely!” Betty exclaimed. “Where is it?” “Quite close. In the Strand. You know the church called St. Mary-le-Strand? It is the first of the two churches that stand in the middle of the road as you go up the Strand from Charing Cross. Well, just in front of that church, we shall find the Maypole. You can hear the shouts of the people now.”