“Of course you do,” said Godmother sympathetically. “But as it’s a pity to hate the place you have to live in, I’m going to make you think London the most fascinating town in the world.”
She spoke confidently, and just as confidently Betty said to herself, “You’ll never do that.”
“You think it’s ugly, don’t you?” Godmother inquired. “Well, so it is—in parts.”
SHE WAS BEGINNING TO THINK SHE LIKED HER GODMOTHER
“Oh, it’s not all ugly,” Betty hastened to allow. “This little street is awfully pretty—and so quiet. It’s like a street in a country town. You can forget you’re in London. It’s a very old street, isn’t it?” She was forgetting her shyness and beginning to think she liked her godmother. She certainly liked the look of her. Godmother Strangeways was dressed in a way which Betty described to herself as “nicely old-fashioned.” She had snow-white curls fastened back behind her ears with tortoiseshell combs, and the ample-flowered silk dress she wore was, as her godchild decided, “just right” for the small white-panelled room with its old furniture and tall narrow cabinets filled with all sorts of curious things.
“Old?” repeated her godmother. “It’s about two hundred years old, and that, as London goes now, is rather ancient. But it’s new compared with the age of London itself. What is two hundred years compared with nearly two thousand?”
“Is London as old as that?”
“Where’s your history? Didn’t the Romans live here once upon a time?” asked Godmother Strangeways briskly.
“So they did,” murmured Betty.