She gave the lie, for once, to the saying that a woman is never ready
at the appointed time by being on the steps a full ten minutes before
Jack Barrow appeared. They walked to the corner and caught a car, and
in the span of half an hour got off at Granville Park.

The city fathers, hampered in days gone by with lack of municipal
funds, had left the two-hundred-acre square of the park pretty much as
nature made it; that is to say, there was no ornate parking, no attempt
at landscape gardening. Ancient maples spread their crooked arms
untrimmed, standing in haphazard groves. Wherever the greensward
nourished, there grew pink-tipped daisies and kindred flowers of the
wild. It was gutted in the middle with a ravine, the lower end of
which, dammed by an earth embankment, formed a lake with the inevitable
swans and other water-fowl. But, barring the lake and a wide drive
that looped and twined through the timber, Granville Park was a bit of
the old Ontario woodland, and as such afforded a pleasant place to loaf
in the summer months. It was full of secluded nooks, dear to the
hearts of young couples. And upon a Sunday the carriages of the
wealthy affected the smooth drive.

When Jack Barrow and Hazel had finished their lunch under the trees, in
company with a little group of their acquaintances, Hazel gathered
scraps of bread and cake into a paper bag.

Barrow whispered to her: "Let's go down and feed the swans. I'd just
as soon be away from the crowd."

She nodded assent, and they departed hastily lest some of the others
should volunteer their company. It took but a short time to reach the
pond. They found a log close to the water's edge, and, taking a seat
there, tossed morsels to the birds and chattered to each other.

"Look," said Barrow suddenly; "that's us ten years from now."

A carriage passed slowly, a solemn, liveried coachman on the box, a
handsome, smooth-shaven man of thirty-five and a richly gowned woman
leaning back and looking out over the pond with bored eyes. And that
last, the half-cynical, half-contemptuous expression on the two faces,
impressed Hazel Weir far more than the showy equipage, the outward
manifestation of wealth.

"I hope not," she returned impulsively.

"Hope not!" Barrow echoed. "Those people are worth a barrel of money.
Wouldn't you like your own carriage, and servants, and income enough to
have everything you wanted?"

"Of course," Hazel answered. "But they don