Mr. T.’s return chanced to coincide with a big race meeting, to be followed by a ball at Government House. Sir Alexander Campbell was Governor of Ontario at the time. It was the event of the season, and of course Mr. T. came back in time to attend it and be in evidence. With a party of friends I drove to my first race meeting (oh, how the clothes, the talk, the rushing horses, all looking exactly alike, bored me!) with an invitation to the grand stand box of the Governor General, Lord Aberdeen, also a friend of my father’s, and was thus introduced to the railway official under the best possible auspices. My heart beat high when I saw how he took trouble to be nice to me and begged me to call upon him next day at his office, saying that “something could no doubt be arranged for me _at once_.” I was so delighted that I felt inclined to cable home at once “Got work”; but I resisted this temptation and simply let my imagination play round the nature of the position I should soon be holding in a very big company, with excellent chances of promotion and salary. I was too young to be bothered by the man’s patronizing manner and did not care a straw about his condescension and self-importance, because I thought only of getting work and a start. The ball filled me with intense shyness and alarm, however, for I had never learned to dance, or been inside a ballroom, and it was merely by chance I found out that white gloves and a white tie (not a black one as I had always worn at home for dinner) were the proper things. In a colony, too, an Englishman, who pretends to any standing, cannot be too careful about social details; for everything, and more besides, is expected of him. The ball was even worse than I had anticipated. I was nervous and uncomfortable. Ignorant of the little observances that would have been known to any man brought up differently, I found nothing to say to the numerous pretty Canadian girls, unconventional and natural, who were introduced to me, and I had not the slightest idea that the correct and polite thing to do was to ask each young lady for the “pleasure of a dance.” What people must have thought of my manners I cannot imagine, but the climax was undoubtedly reached when the railway official swaggered up to me in the middle of the room and said he wished to introduce me to his sister. This was duly accomplished, but--I could think of nothing to say. We stood side by side, with the official beaming upon us, I fingering my empty programme and the girl waiting to be asked for a dance. But the request was not forthcoming, and after a few minutes of terrible awkwardness and half silence, the purple-faced official marched his sister off again, highly insulted, to introduce her to men who would appreciate their luck better than I had done.