"Oh no, mother dear. I think horses are delightful when you don't want to go far, and time is no object."
"That's just it," said Mrs. Thompson. "Time is no object. The horses help me to remember that; and I like to remember it—because it gives one the holiday feeling."
"Poor granny!" Jane had taken one of grandmamma's hands, and was squeezing it affectionately. "And it's only a half-holiday. You don't get enough of the holiday feeling.... Oh, where's my Kodak? I must snap those children."
The carriage was stopped; Jane sprang out, and ran back to photograph three little girls in a cottage garden.
"There," said Mrs. Thompson triumphantly. "If we had been in the car, she wouldn't have seen them. We should have passed too quickly."
Jane stopped the carriage again, when they came to a point where the road turns abruptly to cross a high bridge above the railway.
"Here we are, granny. Here's your favourite view."
Mrs. Thompson had always been fond of this view of Mallingbridge; and though it was much too large for a snapshot photograph, Jane liked it, too.
Looking down from the bridge you have Mallingbridge, stretched as a map, at your feet. Once the clustered roofs made a large spot four miles away in the middle of the plain. Now the roofs had encroached until very little plain was left. The town and its suburbs had rolled out in all directions, burying green meadows beneath warehouses and factories, stifling the copses with red-brick villas, planting the flowery slopes with tram-lines and iron standards. To-day the light was bad; the sun only here and there could pierce the drab clouds of smoke that rose from countless chimneys, and drifted and hung over the central part of the town; but the three big towers showed plainly enough—the square tower of St. Saviour's, the steeple of Holy Trinity, and the pinnacled monument of Bence's clock. And very plainly, with the sunshine suddenly striking it, one saw the huge dome of Bence.
A changed view, a widely extended map, since Mrs. Thompson first looked at it. But there at her feet lay the world that she had conquered and held.