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and hop, then advance left, and so on. What I needed was practice doing the steps in loops that wound back and forth, which were typical of reels.
    I also needed drilling on the way to move my shoulders so that I could pass another dancer back to back without the two of us bumping into each other. Under Grandpa's directions, I spent some time trying to move lightly and easily, and to look as if I was having a good time. Actually, I was having a good time, but making it look easy wasn't easy.
    After dinner, Grandma helped me put on my costume for the dance. At last, I got to put on Ron's kilt!
    “I don't know what the world is coming to,” grumbled Grandpa when he saw me all dressed up in the kilt and blouse and wearing the sporran and Balmoral cap.
    “You have to face reality, Alec,” Grandma told him. “Nowadays you can't find many boys who like to dance.”
    Strictly speaking, we were supposed to be four boys and four girls for most of the dances. But even in Vancouver, Grandpa's troupe always had fewer boys than girls, so he had to have some girls dressed as boys. Everybody wore plaid skirts and frilly blouses and the same kind of bonnet, and from a distance, you couldn't tell the boys from the girls.
    The whole troupe of dancers came over after dinner. Including me, our group consisted of five girls and three boys. Most of the dancers were not much older than I was. Grandpa told me that he was in charge of the younger group, but there was also another troupe of older dancers doing more complicated stuff.
    Looking around at the other dancers, I couldn't help noticing that they looked very different from me. They all had brownish or red hair and pale skin. Several had freckles. My black hair and darker skin really stood out in the crowd. I tried not to let it bother me.
    We started practicing in the living room, and soon thewhole house shook as we thumped and stamped and hopped and skipped. Besides coaching us on the dancing, Grandpa provided the music with his fiddle. Once, I called his instrument a violin, and he corrected me. “I'm a fiddler, not one of your stuck-up violinists!” he declared. Fiddler or violinist, he was good, and the tunes just leaped off his instrument and set our feet jumping to keep time.
    Even after a whole afternoon of practicing with Grandpa, dancing with the others was a challenge. I didn't have too much trouble making my feet do the right steps and keeping my arms in the right position. But I saw what Grandpa meant about being in the right place at the right time. Soon after we began, I bumped into another dancer—a girl about my age with curly ginger hair. She just smiled and kept on dancing. After that, I concentrated harder and managed not to bump anybody again.
    I love all kinds of dancing, and I was a little disappointed that Dad couldn't teach me any Chinese dances. “Chinese farmers did some folk dancing, usually connected with rice planting or harvesting,” he said. “But most other dances were done by professionals in the old days.”
    “What about now?” I asked. “Is there much dancing in China these days?”
    Dad smiled. “Actually, many Chinese in the cities prefer Western ballroom dancing!”
    So that's why I don't know any traditional Chinese dances. I do know some American folk dances, but I still think the Scottish dances are the most fun. As we rehearsed in our living room, I could almost imagine myself leaping around in the purple heather.
    After an hour of dancing, Grandpa called for a break. His face was streaming with sweat, his thatch of red-gray hair was standing on end like a rusty Brillo pad, and his eyes were shining. He loves dancing as much as I do, and I was determined to make him proud of me, even though he really wanted Ron, not me, to be in the dance troupe.
    At the thought of Ron, I looked around and found him sitting on the sofa with Grandma. Both of them had been watching the rehearsal. One of the boys in the group went over to Ron, and the two