“Poor London!” said Betty. “But how did it ever wake up again?”
“It had to wait till the worst of the fighting was over before it was occupied again—this time by a different race—the English race. Then London once more came to life. But by this time probably nearly the whole of the Roman buildings had disappeared, and become buried under the first rough English houses where the new race of men lived who once more made the city into a thriving port.”
“And these English people forgot all about the Romans, I suppose?”
“They never knew them, you see. Even the few British who were left (the descendants of those who had lived under Roman rule), only had legends about them. They used the great roads the Romans had made, but they called them by new names—English names. Watling Street, for instance, was the name they gave to the great Roman road that led northwards out of London. It is now partly Oxford Street and partly Edgware Road. Roman London disappeared as though it had never been, till bits of it, ages later, were, and are, being dug up.”
“Then didn’t the Romans ever have anything to do with the English at all?”
“They had a great deal to do with them—later on. For one thing, as you ought to remember, they converted them to Christianity.”
“Oh yes, of course. St. Augustine came from Rome, didn’t he, and taught the English to be Christians? But that was a long time afterwards.”
“When we see London again, it will be a Christian city once more, just as it was when you and I looked down upon it from the Roman fortress.”
“Only the people in it will be English—instead of British and Roman,” said Betty. “Oh, Godmother, when shall we see it the ‘magic’ way again?”
“All in good time,” was Godmother’s reply, as she looked at her watch. “I shall just have time to show you one little bit of Roman London which remains to this day just where the Romans left it,” she added.