"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."