“This _is_ rich!” Dick exclaimed as they marched solemnly up the hot street. “What wouldn’t I give to have Dr. Goode and Jack Randall see this procession; and mother and Florrie, too. But I think some of them would be wanting to know where I got this wife and baby. “This the hotel?” he wondered, when the porters turned into a sombre stone building with a display of canned goods on the shelves inside. “Why, this is a grocery store.” But a moment later he took it to be a cigar store, then a barroom, then a restaurant. It was the hotel office nevertheless, and the lady with the baby remained standing by the door while Dick went up to the clerk to negotiate. Such a hotel office he had never seen before. It was a large room, certainly fifty or sixty feet square, with a counter running partly across near the front, and shelves back of the counter filled with cans and bottles, and all the rear part of the room occupied with chairs and marble-topped tables. The clerk was full of smiles, as a matter of course. No words were needed to tell him what was wanted. Here was a family just arrived by the steamer, and they desired accommodations. He summoned a copper-colored boy to show them to their room, and bowed profoundly. “Yes, but hold on here!” Dick exclaimed as the truth flashed upon him. “This is not a family, you know; this is parts of two families. We’ve come in sections. The lady wants a room, and so do I; but we want them separate.” The clerk raised his eyebrows in astonishment at Dick’s rapid English. “Two rooms,” said Dick; “two--two;” and he held up two fingers. “Dos?” said the clerk. He understood the word two, and repeated it in Spanish. “Wait till I bring the lady,” Dick answered. “I can’t tell her what I want to say,” he added under his breath; “but she ought to see for herself, and explain it.” And so she did. A few rapid sentences exchanged between the lady and the clerk, with many gesticulations, set everything straight. Señora Comacho and her child were led away in one direction, and Dick was escorted in another to a room scarcely smaller than his flat in New York. “They’re determined to make a family man of me,” he said as he glanced about the room; “and it would take a good-sized family to occupy this room properly. Four big beds, four washstands, four rocking-chairs, brick floor, and enough windows for a whole house.” By the middle of the afternoon he had seen most of the sights of Vera Cruz, including the great hospitals that once were monasteries, and the Alameda, the Trianon, and the ugly black buzzards that clean the streets, and was sure that he had material for one or two good articles. He must, he knew, escort his fair charge down to dinner; and he had returned to the hotel for that purpose and was trying to devise a way of sending a message to her, when the lady herself appeared.