2003. There used to be a rather plain timber bridge before then."

The date shut my mouth as if a key had been turned in a padlock fixed
to my lips; for I saw that something inexplicable had happened, and
that if I said much, I should be mixed up in a game of cross
questions and crooked answers. So I tried to look unconcerned, and
to glance in a matter-of-course way at the banks of the river, though
this is what I saw up to the bridge and a little beyond; say as far
as the site of the soap-works. Both shores had a line of very pretty
houses, low and not large, standing back a little way from the river;
they were mostly built of red brick and roofed with tiles, and
looked, above all, comfortable, and as if they were, so to say,
alive, and sympathetic with the life of the dwellers in them. There
was a continuous garden in front of them, going down to the water's
edge, in which the flowers were now blooming luxuriantly, and sending
delicious waves of summer scent over the eddying stream. Behind the
houses, I could see great trees rising, mostly planes, and looking
down the water there were the reaches towards Putney almost as if
they were a lake with a forest shore, so thick were the big trees;
and I said aloud, but as if to myself -

"Well, I'm glad that they have not built over Barn Elms."

I blushed for my fatuity as the words slipped out of my mouth, and my
companion looked at me with a half smile which I thought I
understood; so to hide my confusion I said, "Please take me ashore
now: I want to get my breakfast."

He nodded, and brought her head round with a sharp stroke, and in a
trice we were at the landing-stage again. He jumped out and I