To Collingham it meant so much that he listened to her attentively, with eager eyes. In Bob’s marriage, with its attendant circumstances, they had obviously received a shock. All Marillo Park, as well as the public in general, would know it to be a shock and would be watching to see how they took it. In that case, the best thing was the sporting thing. They must stand right up to the facts and accept them. Everyone knew that the younger generation was peculiar. It was the war, Junia supposed, and yet she didn’t know. In any case, it was not the Collinghams alone who were so afflicted, but dotted all over Marillo were families whose young ones were acting strangely. There were the Rumseys, whose twin sons had refused an uncle’s legacy amounting to something like three millions, because they held views opposed to the owning of private property. There were the Addingtons, whose son and heir had married a girl twice imprisoned as a Red and was believed to have gone Red in her company. There were the Bendlingers, whose daughter had eloped with a chauffeur, divorced him, and then gone back and married him again. These were Marillo incidents, and in no case had the parents found any course more original than the antiquated one of discarding and disinheritance. And yet you couldn’t wash your hands of your flesh and blood like that. They were your flesh and blood whatever they did; and it was idiotic to act as if you could cut the tie between yourself and them. He could see for himself that Rumseys, Addingtons, and Bendlingers had lost rather than gained in general esteem by their melodramatic poses. Now, the thing for the Collinghams was to accept the situation with a great big generous heart. They were to open their arms to Bob, and back him loyally in the combination of difficulties he had to swing. But he himself must swing them. Junia laid emphasis on that. By direct action they couldn’t intervene. They could only make it possible for him to act directly on his own responsibility. He had married a wife whose family was in trouble. They, the Collinghams, would not share that trouble, but they would help him to share it, since he had brought on himself the necessity for doing so. To accomplish this, Junia suggested sending to Bob a cablegram covering the following five points. The Follett boy was in jail charged with murdering a detective; Bob should publish at once his marriage to this boy’s sister; he should return to New York by the first convenient steamer; his father was placing ten thousand dollars to his account, and when that was used would place more; he was also ready, if instructed by Bob, to engage the best counsel in New Jersey to defend the boy.