The caretaker, who seemed to know everything that was to be known about the house and its belongings, began to tell her the following story of the picture. “Though he was the kindest-hearted man in the world, Oliver Goldsmith was so careless and happy-go-lucky that he was always in debt, and one morning before he was dressed, he sent over a messenger to this house in which you are standing, to borrow a guinea from his neighbour, Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson crossed this little Square which you see from the window, and went to his friend’s lodgings opposite, to find out what was the matter. The picture shows you why Goldsmith wanted the money. There is his angry landlady waiting to be paid, and there is Goldsmith in his night-cap and dressing-gown with Dr. Johnson sitting opposite to him, looking over some sheets of writing.” “Why is he doing that?” Betty asked. “Well, he knows that his friend is penniless, and even though he now has the money to pay his landlady, he must have some more to go on with. So he has asked him if he has written anything that might possibly be sold. Goldsmith, you see, has been rummaging in that box into which he has thrown stories he has written from time to time, and the manuscript he has just handed to Dr. Johnson is no other than _The Vicar of Wakefield_! [Illustration] “That’s the story so far as the picture tells it. But we know what happens next. Dr. Johnson puts the manuscript into one of those big pockets of his, goes out, and in a short time returns with sixty pounds—the price he has received for the book by which Oliver Goldsmith is best known—the famous _Vicar of Wakefield_.” “And perhaps if Dr. Johnson hadn’t taken it, it would never have been published at all?” Betty suggested. “Very likely,” agreed Godmother. “Well, now that you’ve seen Dr. Johnson’s house, we’ll go and look at the inn in which he and Goldsmith often sat.” They crossed the little Square, and found themselves almost at once in Wine Office Court. “Unluckily Goldsmith’s house has gone, but here is the _Cheshire Cheese_, one of the oldest inns in London, for it was old, when Johnson and Goldsmith used to come here.” They stepped then into the quaintest of taverns! It was dark, with low ceilings and sanded floors, and when they had looked at everything and seen the chair pointed out as Dr. Johnson’s, Betty could scarcely believe they were in modern London. “I understand now why we don’t need ‘the magic’ to see a good deal of London as it was in the eighteenth century!” she remarked. “There’s quite a lot of it left.” “Much more than most people know about, because only a few take the trouble to discover it hidden away behind modern buildings,” Godmother returned. “Is there any other place left in Fleet Street that Johnson used to go to?” Betty asked. “You said he was always walking about here.”