But even then I felt none of that, no need to be embraced as one of the pack. Instead, I kept to myself. Sometimes I went to the library, the big branch with the high arched windows at Gladstone Avenue, where I would sit at a table and read from a book that I pulled off the shelf. I didn’t like made-up stories much; I preferred books on electronics or weather, or else books of history about places I hadn’t even heard of. I didn’t have a library card or know how to get one, and somehow I didn’t think the haughty-looking librarians would give me one anyway, so I never took a book out and so never did finish one. But what I liked to do best was to walk the city streets, sometimes far from my own neighbourhood. One Sunday afternoon I trudged along the bottom of the Rosedale ravine, and came up between two great houses. I passed between them and onto a circular drive where a chauffeur was giving a long black Packard a shampoo. The chauffeur stared at me and it was as if I suddenly saw my own patched trousers that were too big for me, my scuffed shoes and dirty cap.
