“I will not,” said Berty again. “You think because you have just been married you are going to run the family. I tell you, I will not do it. I will not live with you.”

“I don’t want to run the family, but I am a year and a half older than you, and I know what is for your good better than you do.”

“You do not—you butterfly!”

“Alberta Mary Francesca Gravely—you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said the beauty, in concentrated wrath.

“I’m not ashamed of myself,” replied her sister, scornfully. “I’m ashamed of you. You’re just as extravagant as you can be. You spend every cent of your husband’s income, and now you want to saddle him with a big boy, a girl, and an—”

“An old lady,” said Margaretta.

“Grandma isn’t old. She’s only sixty-five.”

“Sixty-five is old.”

“It is not.”

“Well, now, can you call her young?” said Margaretta. “Can you say she is a girl?”

“Yes,” replied Berty, obstinately, “I can call her a girl, or a duck, or anything I like, and I can call you a goose.”

“A goose!” repeated Mrs. Stanisfield, chokingly; “oh, this is too much. I wish my husband were here.”

“I wish he were,” said Berty, wickedly, “so he could be sorry he mar—”

“Children,” said a sudden voice, “what are you quarrelling about?”

Both girls turned their flushed faces toward the doorway. A little shrewd old lady stood there. This was Grandma, one of their bones of contention, and this particular bone in deep amusement wanted to laugh, but knew better than to do so.

“Won’t you sit down, Margaretta?” she said, calmly coming into the room and taking a chair near Berty, who was lounging provokingly on the foot of the bed.

It was Grandma’s bed, and they were in Grandma’s room. She had brought them up—her two dear orphan granddaughters, together with their brother Boniface.

“What are you quarrelling about?” repeated the little old lady, taking a silk stocking from her pocket, and beginning to knit in a leisurely way.

“We’re quarrelling about keeping the family together,” said Margaretta, vehemently, “and I find that family honour is nothing but a rag in Berty’s estimation.”

“Well, I’d rather have it a nice clean rag put out of sight,” said Berty, sharply, “than a great, big, red flag shaken in everybody’s face.”

“Sit down, Margaretta,” said Grandma, soothingly.

“Oh, I am too angry to sit down,” said Margaretta, shaking herself slightly. “I got your note saying you had lost your money. I came to sympathize and was met with insults. It’s dreadful!”

“Sit down, dear,” said Grandma, gently, pushing a rocking-chair toward her.

Margaretta took the chair, and, wiping her white forehead with a morsel of lace and muslin, glared angrily at her sister.

“Roger says,” she went on, excitedly, “that you are all—”

“All!” groaned Berty.

“All,” repeated Margaretta, furiously, “or one or two, whichever you like, to come and live with us. He insists.”

“No, you insist,” interrupted Berty. “He has too much sense.”

Margaretta gave a low cry. “Isn’t this ingratitude abominable—I hear of your misfortune, I come flying to your relief—”

“Dear child,” said Grandma, “I knew you’d come.”

“But what do you make of Berty, Grandma? Do say something cutting. You could if you tried. The trouble is, you don’t try.”

Grandma tried not to laugh. She, too, had a tiny handkerchief that she pressed against her face, but the merriment would break through.

“You laugh,” said Margaretta, in awe, “and you have just lost every cent you own!”

Grandma recovered herself. “Thank fortune, I never chained my affections to a house and furniture and a bank-account.”

“Roger says you are the bravest woman he ever saw,” murmured Margaretta.

“Did he say that?” replied Grandma, with twinkling eyes.

“Yes, yes, dear Grandma,” said Margaretta, fondly, “and he told me to offer you all a home with us.”

The little old lady smiled again, and this time there was a dimple in her cheek. “What a dear grandson-in-law! What a good man!”

“He is just perfection,” said Margaretta, enthusiastically, “but, Grandma, darling, tell me your plans! I am just dying to know, and Berty has been so provoking.”

“Berty is the mainstay of the family now,” said Grandma, good-naturedly; “don’t abuse her.”

“The mainstay!” repeated Margaretta, with a bewildered air; “oh, yes, I see. You mean that the little annuity left her by our great-aunt, your sister, is all that you have to depend on.”

“Just those few hundred dollars,” said Grandma, tranquilly, “and a little more.”

“That is why she is so toploftical,” said Margaretta. “However, it is well that she was named for great-aunt Alberta—but, Grandma, dear, don’t knit.”

“Why not?”

“It is so prosaic, after all you have gone through,” said Margaretta. “When I think of your trials, it makes me sick.”

“My trials are nothing to what Job had,” remarked her grandmother. “I read of his tribulations and they make mine seem very insignificant.”

“Poor Grandma, you have had about as many as Job.”

“What have I had?” asked the old lady, softly.

Margaretta made a gesture of despair. “Your mother died at your birth.”

“The Lord took her,” said the old lady, gently, “and when I needed a mother he sent me a good stepmother.”

“Your father perished in a burning hotel,” said the girl, in a low voice.

“And went to heaven in a chariot of fire,” replied Grandma, firmly.

“You married and were happy with your husband.”

“Yes, bless the Lord!”

“But your daughter, our mother, kissed you good-bye one day to go on a pleasure excursion with her husband, and never came back—oh, it breaks my heart to think of that day—my father and mother lost, both at once!” and, dropping miserably on her knees, Margaretta hid her face in her grandmother’s lap.

The old lady’s lip trembled, but she said, steadily, “The Lord giveth—He also taketh away.”

“And now,” said Margaretta, falteringly, “you are not old, but you have come to an age when you are beginning to think about getting old, and you have lost everything—everything.”

“All save the greatest thing in the world,” said Grandma, patting the bowed head.

“You always had that,” exclaimed Margaretta, lifting her tear-stained face. “Everybody has loved you since you were born—how could any one help it?”

“If everybody loves me, why is it?” inquired Grandma, guilelessly, as she again took up her knitting.

Margaretta wrinkled her fair brows. “I don’t know—I guess it is because you don’t talk much, and you seem to like every one, and you don’t contradict. You’re exceedingly canny, Grandma.”

“Canny, child?”

“Yes, canny. I don’t know what the Scottish people mean by it, but I mean clever, 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, Grandma, dear, you will have so little to keep house on. Wouldn’t it be better to go to some first-class boarding-house with just a few nice people?”

“Who might be my dearest foes,” said Grandma, tranquilly. “I’ve rubbed shoulders with such people in hotels before now.”

“Grandma, you haven’t any enemies.”

“Anybody that is worth anything has enemies.”

“Well,” said Margaretta, with a sigh, “what are you going to do? You can’t afford to keep house in such style as this. You won’t want to go into a poor neighbourhood.”

“Give me a house and I’ll make the neighbourhood,” said Grandma, decidedly.

“You have already decided on one?” said her granddaughter, suspiciously.

Grandma smiled. “Not altogether decided.”

“I don’t like your tone,” exclaimed Margaretta. “You have something dreadful to tell me.”

“Berty was out this morning and found a large, old-fashioned house with big open fireplaces. From it we would have a fine view of the river.”

“Tell me where it is,” said Margaretta, brokenly.

“It is where the first people of the town used to live when I was a girl.”

“It isn’t down by the fish-market—oh, don’t tell me that!”

“Just a block away from it, dear.”

Mrs. Roger Stanisfield gave a subdued shriek. “This is Berty’s doing.”

Her grandmother laid down her knitting. “Margaretta, imagine Berty in a fashionable boarding-house—in two rooms, for we could not afford to take more. Imagine the boarding-house keeper when Berty would come in trailing a lame dog or sick cat? The Lord has given me grace to put up with these things, and even to sympathize and admire, but I have had a large house and several servants.”

“But some boarding-house people are agreeable,” moaned Margaretta.

“Agreeable!—they are martyrs, but I am not going to help martyrize them.”

“I quarrel with Berty,” murmured Margaretta, “but I always make up with her. She is my own dear sister.”

“Keep the family together,” said Grandma, shrewdly, “and in order to keep it together let it sometimes drift apart.”

“Grandma, you speak in riddles.”

“Margaretta, you are too direct. I want Berty to stand alone for awhile. She has as much character as you.”

“She has more,” sighed Margaretta. “She won’t mind a word I say—she looks just like you, Grandma, dear. You like her better than you do me.”

“Perhaps I do,” said the old lady, calmly. “Perhaps she needs it.”

“And you are going to let her drag you down to that awful neighbourhood.”

“It isn’t awful—a dose of River Street will be a fitting antidote to a somewhat enervating existence here on Grand Avenue.”

“You want to make a philanthropist or a city missionary of my poor sister.”

“She might do worse,” said Grandma, coolly.

“But she won’t be one,” said Margaretta, desperately. “She is too self-centred. She is taken with the large house and the good view. She will be disgusted with the dirty people.”

“We shall see,” said Grandma, calmly.

“You will only take the house for a short time, of course.”

“I shall probably stay there until eternity claims me.”

“Grandma!”

“One little old woman in this big republic will not encourage home faithlessness,” said Grandma, firmly.

“Dearest of grandmothers, what do you mean?”

“How the old homes must suffer,” said Grandma, musingly. “Families are being reared within their walls, then suddenly the mother takes a caprice—we must move.”

“But all houses are not equally convenient.”

“Make them so,” said the little lady, emphatically. “Have some affection for your roof-tree, your hearthstone. Have one home, not a dozen. Let your children pin their memories to one place.”

Margaretta fell into silence, and sat for a long time watching in fascination the quick, active fingers manipulating the silk stocking.

“You are a wonderful woman,” she said, at last.

“Do you really think so?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Margaretta, enthusiastically. “You let people find out things for themselves. Now I don’t believe in your heart of hearts you want to go to River Street.”

For the first time a shade of sadness came over the face of the older woman. “Set not your affections on earthly things,” she said, “and yet I love my home– However, it is all right, Margaretta. If the Lord sends me to River Street, I can go. If He tells me to love River Street, I shall make a point of doing so. If I feel that River Street discipline is not necessary for me at my time of life, I shall console myself with the thought that it is necessary for Berty.”

“Once,” said Margaretta, keenly, “there was a young girl who teased her grandmother to take her to Paris in the dead of winter. The grandmother didn’t want to go, but she went, and when the girl found herself shut up below on a plunging steamer that was trying to weather a cyclonic gale, she said, ‘Grandma, I’ll never overpersuade you again.’”

“And did she keep her promise?” asked Grandma, meaningly.

Margaretta sprang to her feet, laughing nervously. “Dearest,” she said, “go to River Street, take your house. I’ll help you to the best of my ability. I see in advance what you are doing it for. Not only Berty, but the whole family will be benefited. You think we have been too prosperous, too self-satisfied—now, don’t you?”

Grandma smiled mischievously. “Well, child, since you ask me, I must say that since your marriage I don’t see in you much passion for the good of others. Roger spoils you,” she added, apologetically.

“I will be better,” said the beautiful girl, “and, Grandma, why haven’t you talked more to me—preached more. I don’t remember any sermons, except ‘Keep the family together.’”

“It was all there, only the time hadn’t come for you to see it. You know how it is in this new invention of wireless telegraphy—a receiver must be tuned to the same pitch as that of the transmitter, or a message cannot pass between.”

A brilliant expression burst like a flood of sunlight over the girl’s face. “I’m tuned,” she said, gaily. “I’m getting older and have more sense. I can take the message, and even pass it on. Good-bye, best of Grandmas. I’m going to make my peace with Berty.”

“Keep the family together,” said Grandma, demurely.

“Berty, Berty, where are you?” cried Margaretta, whisking her draperies out into the hall and down-stairs. “I am such a sinner. I was abominably sharp with you.”

“Hush,” said Berty, suddenly.

She had come into the hall below and was standing holding something in her hand.

“What is it?” asked Margaretta. “Oh!” and she gave a little scream, “a mouse!”

“He is dead,” said Berty, quickly, “nothing matters to him now. Poor little thing, how he suffered. He was caught in a cruel trap.”

Margaretta gazed scrutinizingly at her. “You have a good heart, Berty. I’m sorry I quarrelled with you.”

“I forgot all about it,” said Berty, simply, “but I don’t like to quarrel with you, Margaretta. It usually gives me a bad feeling inside me.”

“You want to go to River Street?” said Margaretta, abruptly.

“Oh, yes, we shall be so near the river. I am going to keep my boat and canoe. The launch will have to go.”

Margaretta suppressed a smile. “How about the neighbourhood?”

“Don’t like it, but we shall keep to ourselves.”

“And keep the family together,” said Margaretta.

“Yes,” said Berty, soberly. “Trust Grandma to do that. I wish you and Roger could live with us.”

“Bless your heart,” said Margaretta, affectionately throwing an arm around her.

“But you’ll come to see us often?” said Berty, anxiously.

“Every day; and, Berty, I prophesy peace and prosperity to you and Grandma—and now good-bye, I’m going home to save.”

“To save?”

“Yes, to save money—to keep my family together,” and holding her head well in the air, Margaretta tripped through the long, cool hall out into the sunlight.

“Thank God they have made up their quarrel,” said Grandma, who was leaning over the stair railing. “Nothing conquers a united family! And now will Margaretta have the strength of mind to keep to her new resolution?”