It was of stone arches, splendidly solid, and as graceful as they were strong; high enough also to let ordinary river traffic through easily.

Over the parapet showed quaint and fanciful little buildings, which I supposed to be booths or shops, beset with painted and gilded vanes and spirelets.

The stone was a little weathered, but showed no marks of the grimy sootiness which I was used to on every London building more than a year old.

In short, to me a wonder of a bridge.
The sculler noted my eager astonished look, and said, as if in answer to my thoughts-- "Yes, it _is_ a pretty bridge, isn't it?
Even the up-stream bridges, which are so much smaller, are scarcely daintier, and the down-stream ones are scarcely more dignified and stately." I found myself saying, almost against my will, "How old is it ?" "Oh, not very old," he said; "it was built or at least opened, in 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.