“Why, that will be another month’s journey!” his mother exclaimed; “and just when you’ve made yourself so famous, too. I’m so glad you signed your name to those beautiful letters, Dick.” This was the first intimation Dick had that his name had been signed to the letters. His mother had carefully saved the papers that had the letters in, and there, sure enough, was his name at the end of every one--Richard Sumner--in bold capitals. Dick was as much pleased about it as anybody, for he knew the vast difference to the writer between an anonymous article and one with a signature. He took out a pocketful of letters that had been waiting for him in the office, and almost the first one opened was from the Benedict and Jackson Syndicate, asking him to write them a series of tropical letters. Another was from one of the great illustrated weeklies, asking for a page article on Mexico and the Mexicans. They almost upset Dick for a moment, all these evidences of success, pouring in upon him at once. The publishers’ letters he passed over to his mother and Florrie without a word. “God bless you, my dear, dear boy!” his mother exclaimed, after she and Florrie had read the letters. She threw her arms around his neck; and when Florrie did the same thing from the other side, they almost smothered him. “It’s no more than you deserve; not a bit. Nobody knows as well as I do how hard you work, nor what a good boy you are. “Oh, now, listen to me!” she went on, laughing and crying by turns; “calling him a boy! Calling Richard Sumner, the great newspaper correspondent, a boy! But you’ll always be a boy to your old mother, won’t you, Dick?” “That I will!” Dick exclaimed, “whatever happens. But do you know these tears remind me of a funny thing I saw in the railway car down in Mexico. I’ll tell you about it after a while. I was almost drowned in tears down there--not my own, though. I don’t see how people could think those letters amounted to much, for I had to write them in the most outrageous places; sometimes in my cabin when the ship was rolling; sometimes in the cars; once on one end of a table in a Mexican restaurant while a lot of Spaniards were playing monte on the other end; and one I wrote while sitting on a rock on the side of the volcano Popocatapetl. “But we’ll make up for all that botheration to-night,” he rattled on. “We’ll have a regular feast after Darling comes home from work; that oyster supper we missed before. Oh, you ought to see the little Mexican oysters!” “What’s that about an oyster supper!” Darling exclaimed as he entered the room. “I can hear the word oysters through a brick wall.” “Hello, Darling, old man! Ain’t I glad to see you again, though!”