Alpha Book

"You've turned over a
new leaf, Carl Walraven, and what the demon do you mean by going back to
the old leaves? You've come home from foreign parts to your old and
doting mother--I thought she would be in her dotage by this time--and
you're a responsible citizen, and an eminently rich and respectable man.
Carl, my boy, forget the past, and behave yourself for the future; as
the copy-books say: 'Be virtuous and you will be happy.'"
He laughed to himself, a laugh unpleasant to hear, and taking up another
cigar, went on smoking.
He had been away twenty years, this Carl Walraven, over the world,
nobody knew where. A reckless, self-willed, headstrong boy, he had
broken wild and run away from home at nineteen, abruptly and without
warning. Abruptly and without warning he had returned home, one fine
morning, twenty years after, and walking up the palatial steps, shabby,
and grizzled, and weather-beaten, had strode straight to the majestic
presence of the mistress of the house, with outstretched hand and a cool
"How are you, mother?"
And Mrs. Walraven knew her son.


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