"'What do you think of that, Dad?' I yelled. I always called him Dad as a sort of distinction, for although he wasn't my father really, he had been a ripping father to me. "'Bless my heart, my boy,' he said, 'have you taken all these prizes? Why, I'm proud of you.' "'And I proud of you,' I said; then I laughed at him. 'You've tried to keep a secret from me, Dad,' I cried, 'and you haven't succeeded a bit. Where's Mum?' "'Now how on earth did you know that, miles away at school, too?' laughed the Alderman. "'Read it in the papers days ago. Where is she, Dad? I want to give her a good hug.' "'I'm here, dear boy,' said a voice just over my shoulder, a voice I knew so well, that had helped me more in my childish hours than I could ever count, a voice that was perhaps the one that had taught me to speak correctly in those trying early days. She wasn't Mrs. Durham any longer, she was Mrs. Gold, but she hadn't altered one bit, and she was Mum then, as she has always been since. "It wouldn't be honest to skip the next part of the story, and yet I always want to omit this part somehow, because it is entirely composed of events brought about by my own selfishness, obstinacy and pig-headedness, although as a young man I never realised the great grief and the real trouble I was causing to people who had always loved me and done everything for me. "It started after the time I had left the University of Oxford. I had just commenced to feel my wings, so to speak. Everything there had helped to increase and nourish my love of literature, the set I mixed with had placed me on a sort of pedestal which I in no way deserved, everybody seemed to expect a lot from me, every one seemed to believe I would do great and wonderful things, and what was more disastrous still, I believed I should do wonderful things myself. Imbued with these beliefs, I went home after my last year at Oxford, determined to be a great writer, mark you, not an ordinary writer, since I was positively assured of the fact that I had only to make an appearance in print to be instantly proclaimed one of the immortals. Whilst I was in this ridiculous frame of mind, Dad unfolded to me the cherished scheme of his life. It was that I should go into his office and learn the business, and one day become the head of the firm. "I think my blank face must have told them the utter hopelessness of the scheme, even before I had explained to them all my hopes and beliefs as to what I intended to be. One of the things I regret most in my life was the grief I saw only too plainly upon the old Dad's face. He had been brought up a business man all his life, he didn't believe in Literature as a living. He never argued, he didn't storm, hardly said anything, except begging me in an appealing sort of way to reconsider my decision. But I saw at once that I had dealt a death-blow to all his hopes, and, like the selfish young brute I was, I didn't care so long as I got my own way.