Grandma smiled at her, picked up her work, and went on, briskly: “Keep the family together, and you keep the clan together. Keep the clan together, and you keep the nation together. Foster national love and national pride, and you increase the brotherhood of man.”
“Then the family is the rock on which the nation is built,” said Margaretta, her beautiful face a flood of colour.
“Certainly.”
“Then I am a helping stone in the building of a nation,” continued Margaretta. “I, only a young woman in a small city of this great Union?”
“You are a wife,” said Grandma, composedly, “a young and inexperienced one, but still the head of a family.”
Margaretta shivered. “What a responsibility—what kind of a wife am I?”
Grandma maintained a discreet silence.
“Berty says I am extravagant,” exclaimed Margaretta, with a gesture toward the bed.
Again her grandmother said nothing.
“Am I, Grandma, darling, am I?” asked the young woman, in a wheedling voice.