But almost before she finished speaking, a thick mist swallowed up the ball-room with its sparkling lights and its whirling men and women.... The sun was shining, and they were once more in the open air.
“We are in the Chepe now,” Betty said, recognizing it immediately, for it had scarcely changed at all since the reign of Elizabeth.
It was decorated now in honour of May Day. Scarlet hangings draped the front of the houses not only of the market-place itself, but of those in the narrow streets leading from it. Wood Street, a dirty dark lane overhung by its picturesque wooden dwellings, was especially gay, Betty noticed. It was full of life and bustle. At every doorway people stood talking and laughing, and where the top stories almost met overhead, she noticed children leaning from the windows to exchange handfuls of flowers with little opposite neighbours who could reach them easily.
“Now,” said Godmother, “that we have seen London gay and merry on this May Day in the early part of Charles the Second’s reign, I’m afraid you must have just a glimpse of the city a few years later in terrible trouble. Shut your eyes.”
Betty obeyed, and when after a moment Godmother said, “Open them,” she looked round her in horror. They were standing on the same spot in the Chepe, for there was the entrance to Wood Street, just opposite. But what was this terrible change? The Chepe was silent and deserted. Grass was growing between the cobblestones with which it was paved, and the only creature in sight, was a man walking beside a covered cart ringing a bell. What was he repeating in that hoarse voice of his? She listened and with a shudder heard the words, “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”
“We will walk a few steps down Wood Street,” Godmother said.
Betty followed her along the narrow lane. The doors of the houses were all closed. No groups of gossiping people stood there now, and there were no laughing children high above, throwing flowers to one another. On almost every other door Betty saw a red cross drawn in chalk, and beneath it was scrawled God have mercie upon us. The air was full of the sound of tolling bells.
“Oh! how dreadful!” she cried. But the words were uttered in Godmother’s parlour, and she was thankful to be whisked so suddenly into her own day.
“The Plague was in London then, I suppose?” she asked.