And you must imagine this bridge as indeed a short and airy passage across a valley, down into which the persons of our story must carefully climb, across which they must plod, and up whose far side they must laboriously scramble to meet us upon the level ground. For we are much in the position, we novel readers, of village children curiously watching a caravan of gipsies passing through their district. The gipsies (who stand for our characters) plod wearily away along a bend of dusty road. The children cease following, play awhile; then by a short-cut through the fields overtake the travellers as again they come into the straight.
So now with you and me. We have no need to follow our gipsies down the valley that takes two months in the traversing: we skip across the bridge.
But, leaning over, we may take a shot or two at them as here and there they come into view.
CHAPTER II.
Excursions Beneath The Bridge.
I.
Thus we see the meeting again of George and Mary.
When the agitated young man on the day following the cab accident had alighted from the omnibus at the bottom of Palace Gardens he was opposite No. 14 by half-past ten; waiting till eleven; going, convinced she did not live there; returning, upon the desperate hope that indeed she did; waiting till twelve—and being most handsomely rewarded.