Roger and Helen, who had been walking with James and Margaret, stopped at their house and sat on the porch to round out this privileged evening until ten o'clock. The moonlight shone brilliantly on the lake and at its upper end, two or three miles away, the lights of Mayville twinkled through the trees. Boats and canoes were drawing in toward the shore, for Chautauqua custom demands that every one be at home by ten o'clock, and that quiet reign so that the people who have studying to do or are obliged to rise early for their classes and so must go to bed early may not be disturbed.
Some of the boats landed at the dock just below the Hancocks' house and their occupants stepped on the wet planks with happy shrieks of laughter; others went on to the lower dock in front of the hotel.
"It always says in books that moonlight is romantic," said Roger. "I don't see where the romance comes in; it's just easier to see your way round."
There were cries of protest from the two girls.
"Girls always howl when you say a thing like that," went on Roger, "as if a fellow was a hard-hearted fool, but I'd like to have you tell me where there is any romance in real life—any outside of books, I mean."
He stared challengingly at James as if he expected him either to support him or to contradict him, but James was a slow thinker and said nothing. Helen rushed in breathlessly.
"It's just the way you put things together. If you want to look at it that way there are things happening all the time that would look romantic in a story."
"What, I'd like to know," demanded Roger. "Tell just one thing."
"Why—why—" Helen hesitated, trying to put her feelings into words; "why, take to-night when Grandmother found out that it was Dorothy's mother she had been taking embroidery lessons from. Somehow that seems to me romantic—to know one person and to know another person and then to find that they are relations."
Helen ended rather lamely, for Roger was shouting with laughter.