“I never find time to read, myself. Whenever I have the opportunity of recreation, I go out for exercise.” The statement lacked the merit of truth She never took exercise, but was adept at sitting in front of a fire doing exactly nothing. The point was that in this house of the good Peter, Sam’s enterprise was burked, and she wanted him where he could race without a handicap. “Do you ever go to Heaton Park?” she asked conversationally. “I shall probably be going there on Saturday.” “With--with your father?” asked Sam. “Oh, no,” she answered brightly. “Saturday is sermon day. That is why I am in the way here, although,” she added pathetically, “I fear he often finds me in the way. I am not bookish like you and him.” She gave that explanation suddenly, and it satisfied him. “I am not really bookish, either,” he said. “Of course you won’t be going alone to Heaton Park.” She hoped not. “I expect so,” she said. Sam took the plunge. “Could I have the honour of accompanying you, Miss Struggles?” “Oh, but you are so busy. I must not waste your time.” “It couldn’t be wasted with you,” said Sam, and glanced guiltily at Peter’s chair, as if he had exceeded the limits of propriety, but he had never seen Peter with anything but a benevolent smile, on his face, and was unable to see him imaginatively now in any other mood. He took fresh courage. “May I call for you?” “That,” said Ada, “would never do. It would disturb father at his sermon. I shall go by tram at about three o’clock.” She rose. There was nothing to be done with Sam in that house, but she pinned her faith to Heaton Park: and not in vain. Allow for the difference in size, distance and the general scale of things, and Heaton Park may be regarded as the Manchester equivalent to Richmond Park. Once upon a time the Manchester Town Council had a magnificent opportunity, and lost it. There are legends that they did not mean to lose it, and that they did not lose it through any fault of theirs. But they lost it. They lost the chance of buying Trafford Park, which lies along the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal, and was bought by Mr. Ernest Terah Hooley. It is said that Trafford Park, now a flourishing and rather American-look-ing industrial town (even the streets in its residential area are numbered, and not named, after the American plan, and railways stray about the roads, _more Americano_), is the one successful enterprise associated with the name of Hooley. That may or may not be true: at any rate the Manchester Town Council missed its chance at Trafford Park, and when Heaton Park, another old estate, came into the market, the Council did not repeat their mistake.