“And ain’t I glad to have you back!” Darling retorted, wringing Dick’s hand. “And back in such shape, too. Oh, you’ve done yourself proud, Dick. Everybody has read your letters, and everybody likes them. And I’m so glad, Dick,”--he lowered his voice a little and looked toward the door, for Mrs. Sumner and Florrie had stepped out to see after Dick’s trunk,--“I’m so glad the first thing you think of is home. So many of the fellows would think first of having a rousing time with the boys.” “Pshaw!” Dick interrupted; “if a man can’t have a good time at home, where can he have it?” “That’s my idea. But some fellows don’t think so. I knew almost from the start that you were a fellow who would follow his ideals, Dick. Just let you get it into your head that the proper thing, the manly thing, was to be fast, to be a good fellow in the little clubs, to play poker and drink cocktails, and you’d have gone into it strong, and it would have run you to the dogs in no time. But your good sense and good principles led you the other way, and you’re just as hearty in your work as you might have been in deviltry. Whatever you set up for your ideal, that you’d follow to the death. You don’t know how much I think of you, old man. There’s no nonsense about you, either; not a bit. Shake again.” “Well,” Dick laughed, anxious to change the subject, “we were saying something about an oyster supper, I think. We must have it to-night, for Mr. Brown tells me they’re going to send me right off to Porto Rico. That means another month’s journey, I suppose. We’ll have the supper to-night after you come home from the office; just mother and Florrie, you and myself; ‘us four and no more,’ as the rhyme goes.” “Of course it’s understood that I pay half the expense,” Darling said. “But I’m sorry you’re going right off again--and glad too; when do you start?” “Not settled yet,” Dick answered. “I’m to see the old man about it this afternoon. But in the first steamer, I suppose.” The neighbors in the flat had grown accustomed to the late hours kept by the two newspaper men. At first they had been very suspicious. Dick and Darling must be gamblers, they thought, to be out so late every night; or perhaps they were actors; but they learned the truth after a few weeks. “That old yarn about living in New York for twenty years without knowing your next-door neighbors,” Dick said one day, after some one had been asking a great many questions of Florrie, “may be true to some extent. But I notice our neighbors keep pretty well informed about our affairs.”