Somehow the first three days of the voyage, when the young ladies were on board, passed very quickly and pleasantly; and the last three, after they had landed at their father’s plantation, rather seemed to drag. Perhaps it was because the scenery grew somewhat monotonous. Dick helped the three ladies up the steep gangway at the plantation; and when he returned to the boat and left them standing on the bluff, the clerk said to him:-- “Now wave to them; wave your handkerchief. They’ll expect you to wave good-by to them.” Dick waved with a will, and they returned the compliment quite as heartily. The boat swung around a bend, and the three pleasant young ladies became only a memory. When he arrived in New Orleans Dick had a self-conscious feeling that troubled him at first. He felt that he had become somewhat countrified in appearance; that people were looking at him; that he needed brushing up. It was the natural result of spending so many weeks on the river and among the mountains, and it soon wore off. Another trouble was that he was running short of funds. So much travel had exhausted most of the money that had been furnished him, and it was necessary to send for more. “It won’t do to run out of money here,” he thought, “where nobody knows me. Of course I have only to send to the office for more, but there might be some delay about its getting here.” For economy’s sake he stayed only a day in the famous St. Charles Hotel, and then moved into a furnished room in a comfortable old-fashioned house facing Lafayette Square, two or three blocks up St. Charles Street. This was a mistake that Dick would not have made a year later on. As the correspondent of a great New York newspaper his credit would have been good to any reasonable amount in a first-rate hotel till his funds arrived; whereas the private landlady would need her money, and would most likely exact it in advance; and in a restaurant expected funds are not as good as cash in the pocket. Though he knew that his money was sure to arrive, the depleted state of his purse worried Dick, for he had only a few dollars left. On his first day in New Orleans he wrote to the Transport office for a check for three hundred dollars, and it would take, as he reckoned it, at least five days to receive an answer--perhaps six. “The letter might miscarry,” he said to himself a dozen times; “and if it should, another week would be lost, and I have not enough for two weeks. I should have sent for the check sooner.” There were enough sights in New Orleans to occupy his time. The strange cemeteries, with their brick graves built above ground; the French quarter and French market; the old Spanish fort; the lake and its beach and its Coney-Island-like attractions; the river front,--all these things made material for letters. The steamer for Key West was to sail on Thursday morning at eight o’clock, and Wednesday was the sixth day from the date of his letter to the Transport; but no check had arrived.