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No sooner had Betty entered it than she gave a little cry and stood staring at the end wall, where a sort of picture in mosaic work was hanging, filling up its whole space.

“That was in the villa that belonged to Lucius!” she exclaimed. “I remember it quite well. It was the pavement of one of the rooms. There’s the lady riding on that funny animal’s back with the border round her, just as I saw it. Oh, Godmother! Just fancy its being here after all these years and years.”

“It is wonderful,” said Godmother. “How many of the thousands of people who every day hurry along the streets near London Bridge either know or remember that deep down under their feet lies a buried Roman city? Every now and then a fragment of it, like this one, is dug up. But there must be much, much more hidden far beneath houses and shops and roads where trams and omnibuses roll and rattle. By the way,” she added, “if you want to see the actual piece of pavement that was in the villa ‘that belonged to Lucius’ we shall have to go to the British Museum. This one is only a copy of it.”