"Did you ever find it?" challenged Ralph.
"Never looked," returned Dan calmly.
"Oh, you've no imagination!"
Dan chuckled. "According to that, Romance is only imaginary, then. Got you again, Doc!"
Naturally these discussions never arrived anywhere. When one was stumped for an answer he hit out on a new line. The thing was to keep the ball in play by any device until the next meal created a diversion.
"I thought college would be romantic," Ralph went on. "I had fun of course, bully fun, but just the ordinary college fun. There were girls, plenty of 'em, dear little things! transparent as window-glass. Gad! a man longs to meet a woman who can fascinate him, and stir him to the bottom, and keep him guessing!"
"Well, let me see what we've got in Fort Edward," said Dan. "To begin with, there's Biddy Maroney——"
"Cut it out!" cried Ralph. "Fatal to thoughts of Romance! After college there was the medical school and the hospitals," he went on. "They knocked the spots out of Romance. Say, a city doctor loses faith in his fellowmen. I decided I'd hang out my shingle in the woods, and I came up here because it was the beyondest place I could hear of."
"Thinking you'd surely find Romance somewhere back of beyond," suggested Dan.
"Sure! The noble red man, you understand; the glittering-eyed prospector lusting for gold; the sturdy pioneer hewing a home for his brood in the wilderness—and all that! Well, here I am, and what is it?—a village of poor suckers done up brown, like myself, by the real-estate sharks outside!"