§ 4 A few days later Rose said, “I want to take you to see a friend of mine, a Mrs. Sales.” “Do the milkcarts belong to them?” Henrietta asked at once. “Yes.” Rose was amused. “Mrs. Sales is an invalid and she would like to see you. Shall we go on Saturday?” She added as she left the room, “Mrs. Sales was hurt in a hunting accident, but you need not avoid the subject. She likes to talk about it.” “What a good thing,” Henrietta said, practically. Aunt Rose was dressed for walking and Henrietta was afraid of being asked to go with her, but Aunt Rose made no such suggestion. Since Sunday Henrietta had been exploring Radstowe and its suburbs with an enthusiasm surprising to the elder aunts, who did not care for exercise; but Henrietta was as much inspired by the hope of seeing that man again as by interest in the old streets, the unexpected alleys, the flights of worn steps leading from Upper to Lower Radstowe, the slums, cheek by jowl with the garden of some old house, the big houses deteriorated into tenements. All these had their own charm and the added one of having been familiar to her father, but she never forgot to watch for the hero on the horse, the restorer of her orchid. If she met him, should she bow to him, or pretend not to see him? She had practised various expressions before the glass, and had almost decided to look up as he passed and flash a glance of puzzled recognition from her eyes. She thought she could do it satisfactorily and to-day she meant to cross the bridge for the first time. He had been riding over the bridge that afternoon and what had happened once might happen again. Moreover, she had a feeling that across the water there was something waiting for her. Certainly behind the trees clothing the gorge there was the real country, with cows and sheep and horses in the meadows, with the possibility of rabbits in the lanes, and she had never yet seen a rabbit running wild. There were innumerable possibilities on that farther side. She crossed the bridge, stood to look up and down the river, to watch the gulls, white against the green, to consider the ant-like hurrying of the people on the road below and the clustered houses on the city side, a medley of shapes and colours, rising in terraces, the whole like some immense castle guarding the entrance to the town. And as before, carriages and carts went and came over, schoolgirls on bicycles, babies in perambulators, but this time there was no man on a horse. She knew that this mattered very little; her stimulated excitement was hardly more than salt and pepper to a dish already appetizing enough, and now and then as she went along the road on a level with the tree-tops in the gorge and had glimpses of water and of rock, she had to remind herself of her preoccupation.