It was very pleasant in the sunshine to lean one's elbows on the warm stone of the bridge and look down at the blue water of the canal.

Bobbie had never seen any other canal, except the Regent's Canal, and the water of that is not at all a pretty colour.

And she had never seen any river at all except the Thames, which also would be all the better if its face was washed.
Perhaps the children would have loved the canal as much as the railway, but for two things.

One was that they had found the railway FIRST--on that first, wonderful morning when the house and the country and the moors and rocks and great hills were all new to them.

They had not found the canal till some days later.