But we poor dramatists, taught by impatient audiences to move on, and taught by those great professors of verbosity, our female novelists and nine-tenths of our male, that it is just possible for "masterly inactivity," _alias_ sluggish narrative, creeping through sorry flags and rushes with one lily in ten pages, to become a bore, are driven on to salient facts, and must trust a little to our reader's intelligence to ponder on the singular situation of Mary Bartley and her two fathers.
One morning Mary Bartley and her governess walked to a neighboring town and enjoyed the sacred delight of shopping.

They came back by a short-cut, which made it necessary to cross a certain brook, or rivulet, called the Lyn.

This was a rapid stream, and in places pretty deep; but in one particular part it was shallow, and crossed by large stepping-stones, two-thirds of which were generally above-water.

The village girls, including Mary Bartley, used all to trip over these stones, and think nothing of it, though the brook went past at a fine rate, and gradually widened and deepened as it flowed, till it reached a downright fall; after that, running no longer down a decline, it became rather a languid stream.
Mary and her governess came to this ford and found it swollen by recent rains, and foaming and curling round the stepping-stones, and their tops only were out of the water now.
The governess objected to pass this current.
"Well, but," said Mary, "the other way is a mile round, and papa expects us to be punctual at meals, and I am, oh, so hungry! Dear Miss Everett, I have crossed it a hundred times." "But the water is so deep." "It is deeper than usual; but see, it is only up to my knee.

I could cross it without the stones.