“Oh, Godmother, do come back soon!” Betty said, when the sad moment for saying good-bye had come. “There are hundreds and hundreds more things I want to see in London!”
“Then you don’t hate it quite so much as you did some weeks ago?” asked the old lady slyly.
“Oh, I love it! But I never should have loved it without you and the magic journeys. And now there won’t be any more magic for ages.”
“That will be your own fault then,” returned Godmother briskly. “With certain books, some of which you know already, as guides, and a certain exercise of imagination which will grow stronger if you practise it, the Present will melt into the Past, and you will be able to call it up at your pleasure. But never forget, Betty, that the Past has made the Present, and when you are grown up, try to make other people reverence the Past of London, and be unwilling, except for very pressing reasons, to destroy what is old and full of memories. London is changing before our eyes, and too much that is beautiful and interesting is being swept away, often through carelessness and indifference. I hope you’ll be one of the small group of people who help to guard the Past, and use their influence to prevent unnecessary destruction in our wonderful city. And remember that you’ve only just begun to know a tiny fraction of its history. There is enough yet left to learn to last you your lifetime.”
“I know,” said Betty. “Godmother,” she added after a moment, “you said you would read me the rhyme about London bells.”
Godmother went to the cabinet, out of which so many charms had been drawn, and took out a book which she put into Betty’s hand.
“You’ll find it in this book, which I’m going to give you in memory of our journeys, magic and otherwise. It’s called London in Song, and I hope it will remind you of many things we’ve seen together. The Nursery Rhyme about the bells was written by some unknown lover of London who lived in the eighteenth century, and some of it at least you’ve often sung at parties when you played ‘Oranges and Lemons.’”
So in the Tube on her way home to Chelsea, which she could now picture as it was before it had become just a part of London instead of a country village, Betty read the rhyme of the bells, and amused herself by counting up how many of the churches mentioned in it she knew.
“Gay go up and gay go down