What was romance here to the colorful, high-tensioned thing I had seen in devastated areas where loves of all gradations were torn and scattered and trampled into the earth like chaff! Fretfully I told them this. They exchanged glances, yet she continued in coaxing vein: "You're such a big baby to've been such a big soldier! Don't you know that romance is always just over the hill, hand in hand with adventure--both lonely for someone to play with? Wars can't kill them! It's after wars, when a nation is wounded, that they become priceless!" "By George, that's right," Dad cried. "Come to think of it, that's exactly right! And Gates has the same crew of six--men you've always known! Even that rascal, Pete, cooks better 'n ever! The _Whim_, you can't deny, is the smartest ninety-six foot schooner yacht that sails! I say again that if I had the chance I'd turn her free on whatever magic course the wings of the wind would take her! That I would--by George!" And there was a note of deep appeal in the Mater's voice as she asked: "Why not get that boy you wrote so much about--Tommy what's-his-name, the Southerner? I like him!" This plan, which I now saw had been so carefully prepared--fruit of the secret conference--was but one in the million or so of others throughout America nurtured and matured by the brave army of fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who stayed at home and gave their all, waiting with alternate hopes and fears, looking with prayerful eyes to the day that would bring a certain one back into their arms. What difference if some plans were elaborate and some as modest as a flower? Who would dare distinguish between the cruise on a private yacht and the cake endearingly made in a hot little kitchen for the husky lad just returned from overseas? Each was its own best expression of pride and love. Each said in its tenderest way: "Well done, my own!" A lump came into my throat. "It's rather decent of a fellow to have two such corking forbears," I murmured. The Mater turned her gentle eyes to the fire, and Dad, clearing his throat in a blustering way--though he was not at all a blustering man--replied: "Perhaps it's rather decent of us to have a son who--er, I mean, who--well, er----" "A cruise hits me right," I exclaimed, hurriedly coming to his rescue, for neither of us wanted a scene. "And I'll wire Tommy Davis, Mater--the chap you mentioned. He's a corking fellow! I didn't write you how the battalion started calling him 'Rebel' till he closed up half a dozen eyes, did I? You see, in the beginning, when we were rookies, the sergeant had us up in formation to get our names, and when he came to Tommy that innocent drawled: 'Mr. Thomas Jefferson Davis, suh, of Loui'ville, Jefferson county, Kentucky, suh.' You could have heard a pin drop. The sergeant, as hard-boiled as they come, stood perfectly still and let a cold eye bore into him for half a minute, then gasped: 'Gawd! What a wicked little rebel!'" They laughed.