"Before you go one bit further, Penelope dear, do promise to speak in words of one syllable! I know all about steel but I must admit I'm very stupid about girls!"
"Thomas, you're not stupid--you just don't think about them and yet your two girls are more precious to you than the whole steel market! And what are you doing with them? Look at Celia--how has she stood the trials of this wartime? Goodness knows, you've spent enough money on her to have made a strong woman of her!"
"But she's young, Pen----"
"Celia's twenty-one--that's the age they've been drafting the boys to go and fight for us! She's a few years older than some who have died over in France. And now she's had a nervous breakdown! Why in the world should Celia have any nerves at all?"
"You're right, Pen, but----"
"This draft we have had in this country has been a wonderful thing; it has sorted out our manhood. But I'm sorry the women couldn't have had it, too, I wonder how many would have measured up to the standards, and why not? Because we older ones make mistakes with the girls--like Pat!"
Penelope was standing now, very straight, before the fire, her eyes bright in her earnestness.
"I tell you we've reached a wonderful day, brother--we can see things as we never saw them before! Silly old prejudices and habits and notions have been swept aside. Do you know one thing we've learned? That it is something even greater than love for one's country that has made men go out and fight--to victory; it's a love for right and justice! And in one of John Randolph's books he tells us that it is that love for right and justice that will make the real brotherhood of men and nations! Who is going to carry on this ideal as we have found it? Why, our boys and girls--girls like Pat!"
"Pen, your eloquence makes me feel as though I had never known the real meaning of the word duty!"
"Oh, it isn't half so much--duty, Tom, as it is plain common sense. I've often thought that raising girls and boys is something like a garden! If you were planning a garden and wanted to grow something beautiful--oh, say larkspur, for I don't think any garden is perfect without it and no flower is harder to get started--wouldn't you want to know that you were putting in seed that would grow into hardy blossoms, blooming year after year, keeping your garden lovely and the world richer for their beauty?"