“We can even do a little better than that,” he went on. “I don’t know whether you have heard me speak of Darling, one of our copy readers. I didn’t discover his room till I’d been some time in the office, for it’s separate from our city room; but Darling is a fine fellow, three or four years older than I am, handsome, too, and very quiet. He has no relations in the city, and when I mentioned the other day that we thought of taking a flat, he said he’d like to rent a room from us, for he doesn’t like to be among strangers. He would pay about four dollars a week just for the room, and with that we could afford a thirty-dollar flat; and we can get a very fair one for that.” “Thirty dollars a month!” Florrie exclaimed. “I should think we ought to get a fine house for that.” Dick laughed merrily at his sister’s rural notions. He had learned something about city ways and prices. “Perhaps I’ll not be out again till it’s time for you to come in and select the flat,” he said. “I’ll have longer articles to write now since the Sing Sing business, and long articles always keep a man late.” The brightest reporters, however, cannot be assigned to important things when no important things are happening; and weeks passed before Dick had another chance to show his mettle. He was relieved of the tiresome work of attending petty meetings, and that was a gain; and he was sure that when a chance came for doing good work, he would have his share of it. Darling, whose work was from six in the evening till the paper went to press at two in the morning, not only liked Dick’s writing, but liked Dick himself, and he did all he could to hasten the day when Mrs. Sumner and Florrie should come in to help select a flat. “At two to-morrow afternoon, Darling,” Dick announced when the time came. “My mother and sister are to meet me at the south end of the postoffice at two o’clock, and you must be there and go with us, for you are interested in this thing, too. I hope we can find a flat where you can room with us. There ought to be no trouble when flats are so plenty.” “There will be, though,” Darling answered; “there always is. When the flat suits, the price is too high; and when the price suits, the flat doesn’t. But I’ll meet you at any rate, and we’ll see what we can do.” It was not till Dick saw the next day that Darling preferred to walk with his sister, that he noticed how very pretty Florrie looked. She was a little girl in his eyes, though nearly seventeen, and her abundance of wavy brown hair, her expressive eyes, her pink cheeks, and her graceful bearing had never attracted his notice before. “We will take a Fourth Avenue car,” Dick said, after Darling had been introduced to his mother and sister. “There are a great many flats in Fourth Avenue and some parts of it don’t look expensive.”