Читать книгу Magic London онлайн

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Betty stared. She thought Godmother must be joking.

“Perfectly true,” the old lady assured her in answer to her smile. “On that island just above the water on the right, in another six hundred years, Westminster Abbey will rise.”

Betty heard the gurgling of the water as it washed between the reeds and bulrushes of the island, and as she thought of the beautiful Cathedral under whose shadow her godmother’s house stood, it seemed a miracle that such a change could have taken place.

“Human beings are rather wonderful, aren’t they?” remarked Godmother, smiling, as though she read her thoughts. “They drain wet land and make it useful for growing food, or for buildings. They bore tunnels through solid rocks. They build bridges over rivers, and do a thousand things to alter the world for their own convenience. Who could have imagined that this great London of ours, the largest city in the world, could have grown up from this?” Godmother waved her hand towards the swamps and streams, east, west and south of where they sat rocking in the boat beside the swampy island.