strong, frowning Sanctuary; while to the left glittered the walls and
turrets of the White Tower, the town residence of royalty. Margery,
however, could not see the whole of this as she stepped out of her
house. What first met her eyes were the more detailed and less pleasant
features of the scene. There were no causeways; the streets, as a rule,
would just allow of the progress of one vehicle, though a few of the
principal ones would permit the passage of two; and the pavements
consisted of huge stones, not remarkable either for evenness or
smoothness. A channel ran down the middle of the street, into which
every housewife emptied her slops from the window, and along which dirty
water, sewerage, straw, drowned rats, and mud, floated in profuse and
odoriferous mezee. Margery found it desirable to make considerable use
of her pomander, a ball of various mixed drugs inclosed in a gold
network, and emitting a pleasant fragrance when carried in the warm
hand. As she proceeded along the streets which were lined with shops,
the incessant cry of the shopkeepers standing at their doors, "What do
you lack? what do you lack?" greeted her on every side. The vehicles
were of two classes, as I have before observed--waggons and litters, the
litters being the carriages of the fourteenth century; but the waggons
were by far the most numerous. Occasionally a lady of rank would ride
past in her litter, drawn by horses whose trappings swept the ground; or
a knight, followed by a crowd of retainers, would prance by on his
high-mettled charger. Margery spent the happiest day which she had
passed since her marriage, in wandering about London, and satisfying her
girlish curiosity concerning every place of which she had ever heard.
Lord Marnell frowned when Margery confessed, on her return, that she had
been out to see London. It was not fit, he said, that she should go out
on foot: ladies of rank were not expected to walk: she ought to have
ordered out her litter, with a due attendance of retainers.

"But, my lord," said Margery, very naturally, "an't please you, I could
not see so well in a litter."

Lord Marnell's displeased lips relaxed into a laugh, for he was amused
at her simplicity; but he repeated that he begged she would remember,
now that she _had_ seen, that she was no longer plain Mistress Margery
Lovell, but Baroness Marnell of Lymington, and would behave herself
accordingly. Margery sighed at this curtailment of her