he does now, no ordinary school would take him.'

"'I'm afraid not, sir,' debated Mrs. Durham.

"'Very well, then,' said the Alderman, 'at present there is only one
thing to do; we must have somebody here to teach him English, anyway to
speak properly and to write and spell before he goes to a school. It
must be done, but I think myself it is going to take time,' concluded
the Alderman. Then he put on his hat and started for the City.

"I am not going to dwell upon this youthful period of my life, for
everybody's school-days very much resemble every other person's, but I
do know that the Alderman's belief that my education would take time
proved to be only too true. I shall never forget how long and
painfully I worked and toiled to speak my verbs in their proper tenses,
to stop dropping my aitches, how I longed to drop the Cockney slang,
how my life became possessed with a sort of terror that I should come
out with some expression that would cause concern to either my
benefactor or to Mrs. Durham.

"Well, I strove, and at last I succeeded so well that I was sent to a
fine school where I received a first-class education, and the only
effect of the great struggles I went through at this time was a sort of
nervousness which I shall have all through my life, and which results,
no doubt, from intense anxiety all those years not to make mistakes.

"And so I skip along until one night after the school had broken up at
the end of a winter term. I remember it all so well. I had taken the
best prizes in the fifth form, I was barely fifteen, and I rushed home,
tore into the library, and emptied all those beautifully bound books
into my benefactor's lap. He had been smoking his cigar, and was
dozing in front of the fire.

"'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 help