The Strand along which she had so recently driven, was a bustling street of shops and theatres, with tall-steepled churches at the end of it. Now she saw a country road lined with hedges, across which ran swift streams hurrying to empty their waters in the main river. There were bridges over the streams, and along the tree-shaded road, and across the bridges, rode or trudged a constant procession of people.
“It’s the main road from the City to Westminster, you see,” said Godmother, “so that’s why it’s so crowded.”
“I never knew what the Strand meant before,” declared Betty, all at once enlightened. “A strand is a shore, isn’t it? So that road is just the shore of the river.”
“Just as it is now,” Godmother returned. “Nearly all the narrow streets on the right of the Strand, as you walk up it from Charing Cross station, lead down to the river. But except for lucky people like ourselves, it needs a great deal of imagination to picture it as we see it here, back in the fourteenth century, doesn’t it?”
Betty was now gazing with admiration at a line of beautiful great houses whose gardens sloped to the water and were closed at its brink by a stone gate.
“Those are the palaces of the great nobles,” Godmother told her. “The one we are passing, is called the Savoy, and it belongs to John of Gaunt.”
“Why, there’s the Savoy Hotel, and the Savoy Theatre in the Strand now!” exclaimed Betty. “We passed them to-day.”
“Yes, they stand on part of that very ground where now you see this grand palace. Nearly every street leading from the Strand to the river still bears the name of some nobleman’s palace, and shows where it stood. Essex Street, Buckingham Street, Cecil Street—you noticed some of them this morning? They all mark the site of some great house, now vanished. Many of them—in this reign of Richard the Second—are not yet built, and some of these at which we are looking, will be pulled down and re-built before they are finally destroyed. We are only in the fourteenth century as yet, remember.”
“This Savoy Palace is splendid!” Betty cried with enthusiasm. “Look, Godmother. There are ladies and gentlemen walking on the terrace. Oh, how beautifully they are dressed. Aren’t the colours lovely? I do wish we had dresses like that now, don’t you? Do look at that lady with a thing like a sugar-loaf on her head, and a gauzy veil floating from it.”