In a minute or two they were in the Strand, and there, in the middle of the road, with long coloured streamers hanging from its summit, stood an enormously tall pole wreathed with flowers, round which with laughter and shouting, men and girls were dancing. Some of the boys had garters with bells round their knee-breeches, and nearly all of them were waving handkerchiefs. The whole street was crowded with noisy, merry-making people, and one boy in particular, standing on a high wooden stool close to the Maypole, seemed to be directing the dance. “He is the May-Lord, and he arranges the fun,” Godmother said. “Listen to what he is reciting.” “Up then, I say, both young and old, Both man and maid a-Maying, With drums and guns that bounce along And merry tabor playing! Which to prolong. God save our King, And send his country peace, And root out treason from the land! And so, my friends, I cease.” “London is very gay,” Betty remarked as they walked down the Strand towards Whitehall, passing groups of merry-makers on the way. “But it looks just the same as it did in Elizabeth’s day,” she added, glancing from the line of stately mansions on the left, with wide stretches of the river visible between them, to the fields and gardens on the right of the Strand. “The people wear different sort of clothes now, but the town hasn’t altered much, has it?” “No. We are in the early years of Charles the Second’s reign as yet, and London is as full of gaiety as a few years ago it was dull and gloomy, when the Puritan party was powerful, Cromwell ruled, and all amusements were forbidden. Now the theatres have been reopened, and all the old sports and pastimes of the people have been revived.” “Then there will be acting going on again in those funny theatres we saw in Southwark?” “Yes, but these are already falling out of fashion, and will disappear, because finer play-houses are being built on this side of the river. Drury Lane Theatre is one of them.” “I went there to a pantomime last Christmas,” Betty remarked. “But of course it’s quite a different building now, in _our_ time, isn’t it?” “There have been _three_ Drury Lane theatres since the one in which Nell Gwynne plays now. You went to the fourth building on the same spot.... Now we’re at the end of the Strand and I’m just going to let you have a glimpse of Whitehall Palace which last time we saw only from the water. Look at that beautiful monument in the middle of the road, just where in our time, stands the statue of Charles the First on horseback. That’s the last of the thirteen crosses put up by Edward the First to mark the place where his wife’s body rested when it was brought from Nottinghamshire to be buried in Westminster Abbey.” “It’s in Charing Cross Station yard now, isn’t it?” Betty asked.