"Not likely! When I tell them how cold it is they change their minds. It's always three degrees above freezing."
"How do you know?"
"Because I fell in once," he replied simply.
* * *
I tried hard as I stood there on the level of Roman London, thirty feet below the London of to-day, to picture this spot in its glory. It was no doubt tiled with veined marble, and the London spring water ran in over marble, and the roof perhaps held frescoes showing nymphs and fauns and Pan playing his pipes.
Signor Matania, the artist, has made a fine picture of this bath as he thinks it was when Roman ladies came there to swim without bathing costumes. A pretty picture, but—was the water ever deep enough?
"Some think it was a hot bath, and some think it was a cold one," said the guide, "but nobody knows. Perhaps we shall know when Mr. Bickford digs underneath, as he wants to do, in search of the heating system."
* * *
I climbed up out of Roman London, and a few steps took me to the sight of Bush House and omnibuses racing past to Charing Cross.