"Aunt Francesca," asked Isabel, "is Colonel Kent rich?"
"Very," responded Madame. She had a fine damask napkin stretched upon embroidery hoops and was darning it with the most exquisite of stitches.
"Then why don't they live in a better house and have more servants? That place is old and musty."
"Perhaps they like to live there, and, again, perhaps they haven't enough money to change. Besides, that has been Colonel Kent's home ever since he was married. Allison was born there."
Isabel fidgeted in her chair. "If they're very rich, I should think they'd have enough money to enable them to move into a better house."
"Oh," replied Madame, carefully cutting her thread on the underside, "I wasn't thinking of money when I spoke. I don't know anything about their private affairs. But Colonel Kent has courage, sincerity, an old- fashioned standard of honour, many friends, and a son who is a great artist."
The girl was silent, for intangible riches did not appeal to her strongly.
"Allison is like him in many ways," Madame was saying. "He is like his mother, too."
"When is he going away?"
"In September or October, I suppose--the beginning of the season."
"Is he going to play everywhere?"
"Everywhere of any importance."
"Perhaps," mused Isabel, "he will make a great deal of money himself."
"Perhaps," Madame responded, absently. "I do hope he will be successful." She had almost maternal pride in her foster son.
"Is Cousin Rose going, too?"
"Going where? What do you mean, dear?"
"Why, nothing. Only I heard him ask her if she would go with him on his concert tour and play his accompaniments, providing you or the Colonel went along for chaperone, and Cousin Rose laughed and said she didn't need a chaperone--that she was old enough to make it quite respectable."
"And---" suggested Madame.
"Allison laughed, too, and said: 'Nonsense!'"
"If they are going," said Madame, half to herself, "and decide to take me along, I hope they'll give me sufficient time to pack things decently."
"Would the Colonel go, if you went?"
"I hardly think so. It wouldn't be quite so proper."
"I don't understand," remarked Isabel, wrinkling her pretty brows.
"I don't either," Madame replied, confidentially. "However, I've lived long enough to learn that the conventions of society are all in the interests of morality. If you're conventional, you'll be good, in a negative sense, of course."
"How do you mean, Aunt Francesca?"
"Perfect manners are diametrically opposed to crime. For instance, it is very bad form for a man to shoot a lady, or even to write another man's name on a check and cash it. It saves trouble to be conventional, for you're not always explaining things. Most of the startling items we read in the newspapers are serious lapses from conventionality and good manners."