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“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.

“Well, some of them settled in this island soon after the birth of Christ, and that is nearly two thousand years ago.”

“But I didn’t know they lived in London?”

Godmother laughed. “They made London, child. The first London. And just in the place where it now stands, at the mouth of the Thames.”

“But was it called London then?”

“Something very like it. It’s earliest name was Llyn-din, and the Romans called it Londinium. You see how easy it is to get London out of that? They had another name for it as well—quite a different one.—They sometimes called it Augusta.”

Betty was silent for a minute, then after a quick glance at her godmother she said rather timidly, “Dad says what you know about London is quite uncanny. He says he wonders you don’t write a book about it. When you asked me to come to see you, he was very pleased because he said if any one could make me like London it was you. And of course as I have to live here I should like to like it!” She sighed rather hopelessly.