Original 'Reverse?' he said; 'I don't think I ever heard of it. I thought we were getting on capitally!' And when I explained to him that reversing meant turning round, and going the other way, he declared that it was quite impracticable--that we would knock everybody else over, and that he had never seen it done. After the last argument I did not press the matter. It took very little acquaintance with Mr. Mafferton to know that, if he had never seen it done, he never would do it. 'We will try going back a bit,' he proposed instead; with the result that after the next four or five turns he began to stalk away from me, going I knew not whither. About four minutes later we went back, at my urgent request, to Lady Torquilin, and Mr. Mafferton told her that we had 'hit it off admirably.' I think he must have thought we did, because he said something about not having 'been quite able to catch my step at first, in a way that showed entire satisfaction with his later performance; which was quite natural, for Mr. Mafferton was the kind of person who, so long as he was doing his best himself, would hardly be aware whether anybody else was or not. I made several other attempts with friends of Lady Torquilin and Mr. Mafferton, and a few of them were partially successful, though I generally found it advisable to sit out the latter parts of them. This, when room could be found, was very amusing; and I noticed that it was done all the way up two flights of stairs, and in every other conceivable place that offered two seats contiguously. I was interested to a degree in one person with whom I sat out two or three dances running. He was quite a young man, not over twenty-four or five, I should think--a nephew of Lady Torquilin, and an officer in the Army, living at Aldershot, very handsome, and wore an eyeglass, which was, however, quite a common distinction. I must tell you more about him again in connection with the day Lady Torquilin and I spent at Aldershot at his invitation, because he really deserves a chapter to himself. But it was he who told me, at Lady Powderby's ball, referring to the solid mass of humanity that packed itself between us and the door, that it was with the greatest difficulty that he finally gained the ball-room. 'Couldn't get in at all at first,' said he, 'and while I was standin' on the outside edge of the pavement, a bobby has the confounded impudence to tell me to move along. '"Can't,"' says I--"I'm at the party."' I have always been grateful to the Aldershot officer for giving me that story to remember in connection with Lady Powderby's ball, although Mr. Mafferton, when I retailed it, couldn't see that it was in the least amusing. 'Besides,' he said, 'it's as old as "Punch."' But at the end of the third dance Mr. Mafferton had been sent by Lady Torquilin to look for me, and was annoyed, I have no doubt, by the trouble he had to take to find me. And Mr. Mafferton's sense of humour could never be considered his strong point.