The Story of the Gravelys. Saunders Marshall
and shrewd, and smart, and quiet, and you keep out of scrapes. Now, when I’m with that provoking creature there,” and she looked disdainfully at Berty, “I feel as if I were a fifty-cornered sort of person. You make me feel as if I were round, and smooth, and easy to get on with.”
Grandma picked up a dropped stitch and said nothing.
“If you’d talk more, I’d like it better,” said Margaretta, dolefully, “but I dare say I should not get on so well with you.”
“Women do talk too much,” said Grandma, shortly; “we thresh everything out with our tongues.”
“Grandma, dear, what are you going to do?” asked Margaretta, coaxingly. “Do tell me.”
“Keep the family together,” said Grandma, serenely.
“The old cry,” exclaimed Margaretta. “I’ve heard that ever since I was born. What makes you say it so much?”
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes, yes—it is a regular watchword with you.”
“When my father found himself trapped in that burning building,” said Grandma, knitting a little more rapidly than before, “he looked down from his window into the street and saw a man that he knew. ‘Jefferson,’ he called out, ‘will you take a message to my wife?’
“‘I’ll take fifty, sir,’ answered the man, in an agony.
“My father was quite calm. ‘Then, Jefferson,’ he went on, ‘tell my wife that I said “God bless her,” with my last breath, and that I want her to keep the family together. Mind, Jefferson, she is to keep the family together.’
“‘I’ll tell her,’ said the man, and, groaning and dazed with the heat, he turned away. Now, that wife was my stepmother, but she did as her husband bade her. She kept the family together, in sickness and in health, in adversity and in prosperity.”
Margaretta was crying nervously.
“If you will compose yourself, I will go on,” said Grandma.
Margaretta dried her tears.
“Those four dying, living words were branded on my memory, and your mother was taught to lisp them with her earliest breath, though she was an only child. When she left me that sunny spring day to go on her long, last journey, she may have had a presentiment—I do not know—but I do know that as she pressed her blooming face to mine, she glanced at her three children playing on the grass, and whispered, lovingly, ‘Keep the family together.’”
“And you did it,” cried Margaretta, flinging up her head, “you did it nobly. You have been father, mother, grandfather and grandmother to us. You are a darling.” And seizing the little, nimble hands busy with the stocking, she kissed them fervently.
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.
Grandma’s lips trembled, and her dimple displayed itself again.
“I am,” cried Margaretta, springing up and clasping her hands despairingly. “I spend all Roger gives me. We have no fortune back of us, only his excellent income from the iron works. If that were to fail, we should be ruined. I am a careless, poorly-turned stone in the foundation of this mighty nation. I must shape and strengthen myself, and, Grandma, dear, let me begin by helping you and Berty and Bonny. You will have to give up this house—oh, my darling Grandma, how can you—this handsome house that grandfather built for you? What will you do without your velvet carpets, and lace curtains, and palms and roses? Oh, you will come to me! I shall save enough to keep you, and I shall lose my reason if you don’t.”
CHAPTER II.
GRANDMA’S WATCHWORD
“See here,” said Grandma, feeling in her pocket. “Look at these telegrams.”
Margaretta hastily ran her eye over them. “I don’t understand.”
“Let me explain,” said Grandma, softly. “Brother John sends regrets for loss—will guarantee so many hundreds a year. Brother Henry sympathizes deeply to the extent of a tenth of his income. Sister Mary and Sister Lucy will come to see me as soon as possible. Substantial financial aid to be reckoned on.”
“Oh, Grandma! Grandma!” said the girl, still only half-enlightened. “What do they mean?”
Grandma smiled complacently. “You notice that not one of them offers me a home, though, Heaven knows, their homes are as wide as their hearts. They are not rich, not one is exceedingly rich, yet they all offer me a good part of their respective incomes. That is the outcome of ‘Keep the family together.’”
“Oh! oh! oh!” exclaimed Margaretta. “They know how you love us. They want you to keep up a home for us. They will support you.”
“Exactly,” said Grandma.
“And will you take all that money?”
“No, child, not all; some of it, though. I have helped them. I will do it again, if I can.”
“Isn’t that lovely!” cried Margaretta. “It is almost worth while being unfortunate to call out such goodness as that. Now, Grandma, dear, let us talk seriously. You will have to give up this house.”
“It is given up. My lawyer was here this morning.”
“Roger is coming this evening to see you—will you sell all the furniture?”
“I shall have to.”
“Oh, dear! Well, you won’t need it with us.”
“We cannot go to you, Margaretta,” said Grandma, quietly.
“Oh, why not?”
“It would be too great a burden on Roger.”
“Only three persons, Grandma.”
“Roger is a young man. He has lately started housekeeping and family life. Let him work out his plans along his own lines. It will be better not to join households unless necessary.”
“He just loves you, Grandma.”
“And I reciprocate, but I think it better not to amalgamate my quicksilver Berty with another stronger metal just now.”
“Where is she?” asked Margaretta, turning her head.
“She slipped out some time ago.”
“Roger gets on well with her, Grandma.”
“I know he does. By stronger metal, I meant you. Being the elder, you have rather absorbed Berty. She will develop more quickly alone.”
“Do you want to board?”
“There are two kinds of life in America,” said Grandma, “boarding-house life and home-life. Boarding-house life vulgarizes, home life ennobles. As long as God gives me breath, I’ll keep house, if I have only three rooms to do it in.”
“But,