“Why, there are some Whittington Almshouses at Highgate.”
“Yes. But they were only built about a hundred years ago. They were built, however, with Dick Whittington’s money, and it was a nice thought, wasn’t it, to put them where, according to the story, he heard Bow Bells?”
“They said ‘Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London!’ And now he is Lord Mayor, and there he goes riding by. It seems too good to be true that I’ve actually seen him, Godmother!” declared Betty excitedly. “I used to love the picture-book of Dick Whittington we had in the nursery when I was little. And I loved the pantomime about him too. It was so jolly to hear the bells ringing when Dick sat on the stile at Highgate and listened to them.”
“There’s another old rhyme about Bow Bells, which tells a pretty story about these young ’prentices you see all round you, standing at the doors of their masters’ shops and shouting, ‘Buy! buy! buy!’ This is the tale. At one time an order was given by the Lord Mayor that Bow Bell should ring every night at nine o’clock. It was the signal for the shops to be closed. But according to the ’prentices the bell always rang late, and so kept them at work longer than there was any occasion. They were angry about this, and made a rhyme which they wrote out and put up against the clock:
‘Clerk of the Bow Bell, with the yellow lockes,
For thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes.’
To which the bell-ringer replied in another rhyme,
‘Children of Chepe, hold you all still,
For you shall have the Bow Bell rung at your will.’”
“Oh, how nice of him,” said Betty. “I like the part about the yellow locks. Look! there’s a young man going past now with fair hair almost to his shoulders. He must be rather like that clerk who had to ring Bow Bell.”