Margaret's head was hanging.

"Never again let me hear you speak disrespectfully of your
husband, my child," the old lady went on impressively. "And if you
are wise you will no more permit yourself to harbor a
disrespectful thought of him than you would permit yourself to
wear unclean underclothes."

Margaret dropped down at her grandmother's knee, buried her face
in her lap. "I don't believe I can ever love him," she murmured.

"So long as you believe that, you never can," said Madam Bowker;
"and your married life will be a failure--as great a failure as
mine was--as your mother's was. If I had only known what I know
now--what I am telling you--" Madam Bowker paused, and there was a
long silence in the room. "Your married life, my dear," she went
on, "will be what you choose to make of it. You have a husband.
Never let yourself indulge in silly repinings or ruinous longings.
Make the best of what you have. Study your husband, not
ungenerously and superciliously, but with eyes determined to see
the virtues that can be developed, the faults that can be cured,
and with eyes that will not linger on the faults that can't be
cured. Make him your constant thought and care. Never forget that
you belong to the superior sex."

"I don't feel that I do," said Margaret. "I can't help feeling
women are inferior and wishing I'd been a man."

"That is because you do not think," replied Madam Bowker