For a moment she felt frightened and lost, till she saw that Godmother stood beside her. “Where are we? What is this place?” she stammered.
“London.”
Betty thought of the London through which she had driven this very day. She saw again the crowded streets, the streams of traffic, the long rows of shops, the huge buildings of all sorts; the churches, the banks, the railways. How could this be London?
She looked down at the long grass on which she was standing,—grass that sloped to a clear river. On the opposite bank she saw something rather like a castle or fortress, a large brick building with zigzag battlements and turrets. This castle was reached by a bridge made of broad beams resting on piles of wood driven into the water, and beyond and on either side of the fort she saw, dotted here and there, strange-looking houses, with orchards and gardens and fields all about them.
“We drove over London Bridge this morning, didn’t we?” Godmother asked.
“Yes,” murmured Betty, bewildered.
“Well. There it is!” Godmother pointed to the bridge with its wooden planks and roughly-made railings of wood. “The London you know to-day began just about where we are standing now,” she went on, “and there”—again she pointed—“you see the first bridge that was ever built across the river.”
“Then we’re ever so far back in the Past?” asked Betty.
“We’ve gone back to a day four hundred years after the birth of Christ.”
Before she had time to realize the strangeness of this, Betty’s attention was attracted by the most curious-looking boat she had ever seen, coming round a bend of the river. It had a high curved prow, and it was crowded with men wearing helmets that flashed in the sun, short tunics to their knees, and plates of brass covering their legs. Two rows of long oars stretched on either side of the boat, and as it drew nearer Betty saw that, though it had a sail, the helmeted soldiers were rowing it, and thus making it move very fast.