"That sounds mighty commonplace to me," he roared.
"It would sound all right if a writer worked it up in a book." James suddenly came to Helen's rescue to her great gratification. "We've got a romance in our family," he went on.
"We have!" cried Margaret. "What is it?"
"Perhaps it wouldn't seem like one to Roger," went on James, "but it always seemed to me it was romantic because it was different from the way things happen every day, and there was a chance for a surprise in it."
"I know what you mean," cried Margaret. "Great-uncle George."
"Yes," acknowledged James. "He was our father's uncle and he was a young man at the time of the Civil War. Fathers were sterner then than they are now and Uncle George's father—Dad's grandfather—insisted that he should go into a certain kind of business that he didn't like. They had some fierce quarrels and Uncle George ran off to the war and they never heard from him again."
"Didn't he ever write home?"
"They never got any letter from him," said Margaret. "His mother always blamed herself that she didn't write to him over and over again, even if she didn't get any answer, so that he would know that somebody kept on loving him and looking for him to come back. But Great-grandfather forbade her to, and I guess she must have been meeker than women are now, just as Great-grandfather was stricter."
"Father says," went on James, "that all through his boyhood he used to hope that his uncle would turn up, perhaps awfully rich or perhaps with adventures to tell about. Now I call that romantic, don't you, old man?" ended James defiantly.
"Seems to me it would have been if he had turned up, but he didn't," retorted Roger, determined not to yield.