"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."