“Oh, I suppose they’d make a grand scramble for it if they knew anything about it!” Dick laughed. “They’d be rushing up here with checks and greenbacks till I’d have to keep a clerk to count them. But seriously, mother,”--and he got up and put his arm lovingly around his mother’s waist,--“do you know why I am so anxious to write a successful novel?” “Why, to make you rich and famous, I suppose,” Mrs. Sumner answered, looking proudly up into his face. “I want to make some money for my sweetheart, mother dear,” Dick said. “And you are the only sweetheart I ever had or ever expect to have. Some day Florrie will be leaving us, and she and Darling will have a house of their own in the city. Then if I have the money and don’t have to be at the office every day, my little sweetheart and I can have a snug little cottage out of town somewhere (in Russellville, for instance), with a lawn in front and a garden behind, and honeysuckle climbing over the piazza. Then I can write, write, write, all day, as you put it. I don’t really believe you like living in a flat any better than I do, little sweetheart.” “O Dick!” His mother’s head was on his shoulder now, and her voice was choked with tears. “I’ve never liked it as well as the old house, but I wouldn’t have said so for the world. But to think of going back to Russellville and attending my own church again! It’s never seemed like home in these big city churches, Dick; and I do so like to have a yard to walk about in. And that’s what my boy has been working so hard for. O Dick, Dick, what a good son you are! But you’re not growing tired of newspaper work, are you, Dick?” “Tired of it!” Dick exclaimed; “why it’s meat and drink to me, mother. I think I should wilt and wither if I didn’t do some reporting. But if I can do it occasionally, and at the same time be able to write and sell novels, you see how nicely everything will go with us. I may be making a mistake; nobody may like my book.” “Don’t talk that way, Dick,” his mother said. “You know that everybody will like it. And I’m afraid you are nearer right than you imagine about Florrie. I’m afraid that she and Darling will soon be leaving us.” “All the more haste then for the novel,” Dick laughed. “Let me have another hour at it this afternoon, and then I’ll take a rest till after supper.” Day and night, almost, he continued to struggle with the book; for it was nothing less than a struggle. To write the story was comparatively easy; if it had been only a long story, he would have finished it quickly enough. But a novel is more than a long story. He must develop the characters of his heroes and heroines, and develop them in such a way that every incident and every conversation advanced the plot.