Her father's face relaxed as he looked down at her, and he smiled grimly. "So we get down to the real reason, at last, do we?" he queried. "I thought all this solicitude for my health was a trifle unnatural. I'm useful as a chaperon, am I? See here, girls, I can put in my time more profitably at the stock exchange, and have a heap more fun. I'll hire a chaperon for you, or half a dozen, if you want them, and pull out for New York. What do you say? I don't know the first principles of the business, anyway." "Oh, yes, you do, dad!" protested Susie. "You're a perfectly ideal chaperon." "I am? The ideal chaperon, then, must be one who never does any chaperoning!" "That's it, exactly!" cried Nell, clapping her hands delightedly. "How quickly you see things, dad!" "So that's it!" and he stood for a moment looking darkly at his offspring. "Well, you girls are old enough to take care of yourselves. If you can't, it's high time you were learning how!" "Oh, we're perfectly able to take care of ourselves," Sue assured him. "You mustn't worry about us for a moment, dad." "I'm not likely to. But, in that case, why do you want me along at all?" "Why, don't you see, dad, it's you who give us the odour of respectability. By ourselves, we should be social outcasts, impossible, not to be spoken to--except by men. It isn't convenable." "Oh, I see," said Rushford. "The first great principle of European society seems to be, 'Think the worst of every one.'" "Not precisely, dad; but no unmarried woman may venture outside the circumference of the family circle. That's the great European convention--the basic principle of her social order." "A sort of 'tag, you're it,' game, isn't it? The family circle is a kind of dead line--the ring of fire which keeps out the wild beasts. Step over, and you're lost!" "Of course," said Nell, "it is only to unmarried women that the rule applies." "Oh, certainly," assented her father. "Married women are allowed more latitude--in fact, from such French novels as I've read, I should infer that they usually swing clear around the circle! It's a reaction, I suppose; a sort of compensation for the privations of their youth. I don't like it. Let's go home!" "But your promise, dad!" pleaded Sue, permitting the faintest suspicion of moisture to appear in her dark eyes. "And you know you really do need a vacation." Her father looked down at her, saw the moisture, and surrendered. "You're a humbug," he said; "and this vacation business is another. A man spends two or three months loafing around because somebody tells him he's looking badly and ought to take a rest; and before he knows it, he's accumulated so much rust in his system that he never gets it all out again. His machinery creaks more or less for the rest of his life. The wise man postpones his vacation to the next world." "Well, let's call it a jaunt," suggested Susie. "A jaunt somehow implies hurry and bustle, with plenty of exercise."