"Where are the others?"
"Taking naps."
"I hope I haven't tired Rose out," said Allison, offering Isabel a chair. He had unconsciously dropped the prefix of "Cousin." "We've been working hard lately."
"Is she going with you on your tour?"
"I don't know. I wish she could go, but I haven't the heart to drag father or Aunt Francesca along with us, and otherwise, it would be-- well, unconventional, you know. The conventions make me dead tired," he added, with evident sincerity.
"And yet," said Isabel, looking into the fire, "they are all in the interests of morality. If you're conventional, you'll be good, negatively. It isn't good manners for a man to shoot a lady or to sign a check with another man's name and get it cashed. If you're conventional, you're not always explaining things."
"Very true," laughed Allison, "but sometimes 'the greatest good for the greatest number' bears heavily upon the few."
"Of course," Isabel agreed, after a moment's pause. "Your friends, the Crosby twins, have called," she continued.
"Really?" Allison asked, with interest. "How do you like them?"
"I wish they'd come often," she smiled. "They remind me of a field of red clover, they're so breezy and so wholesome."
"I must hunt 'em up," he returned, absently. "They used to be regular little devils. It's a shame for them to have all that money."
"Why?"
"Because they'll waste it. They don't know how to use it."
"Perhaps they do, in a way. One Fourth of July they gave every orphan in the Orphans' Home two dollars' worth of fireworks. Anybody else would have wasted the money on shoes, or hats."
"I see you haven't grown up. Would you rather have fireworks than clothes?"
"There is a time in life when one sky-rocket can give more pleasure than a pair of shoes, and the gift of pleasure is the finest gift in the world."
Allison was agreeably surprised, for hitherto Isabel's conversation had consisted mainly of monosyllables and platitudes, or the hesitating echo of someone's else opinion. Now he perceived that it was shyness; that Isabel had a mind of her own, and an unusual mind, at that. He looked at her quickly and the colour bloomed upon her pale, cold face.
"Tell me, little playmate, what have the years done for you since you went out and pulled up the rose bushes to find the scent bottles?"
"Nothing," she answered, not knowing what else to say.
"Still looking for the unattainable?"
"Yes, if you like to put it that way."
"Where's your mother?"
"Out lecturing."
"What about?"
"The Bloodless Revolution, or the Gradual Emancipation of Woman," she repeated, parrot-like.