ed me out in the first set. You danced with him,
Vesta, at the ball in '24, forty-three years afterwards. Does he sniffle
yet?"

"I don't recollect, grand-aunt. I was a little girl, and so much
flattered that I thought everything he did was perfect."

"Ah me!" exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, pulling the feather of her turban up,
and looking as much like an old belle as possible at eighty years of
age; "you danced before Lafayette with my grandson Bill. Bill hardly
remembers Lafayette at all, thinking of you that night, so wonderful in
your girl's charms. I told him Vesta would never marry him, as he was
too plain and poor. But I never thought you would marry that--"

Here Rhoda sniffled warningly.

"Yes," exclaimed the old lady, catching the sniffle; "I never thought
you would marry _that_! But Bill is as dear a fool as ever. He says now
that Meshach Milburn is a good man, too. I never thought he was above
a--"

Rhoda sniffled earnestly.

"Precisely that," exclaimed the old lady; "that was my estimate of the
stock. Bill says he is a financial genius. I don't see what is to become
of girls in this generation. Here is Ellenora, too good to marry
Phoebus, the sailor man, too poor to marry anybody else; now, if
Milburn had married her and taken her son Levin into his business, it
would have been reasonable; but to take you and pervert your happiness,
almost makes me--"

Sniffle from Rhoda.

"Yes," said the old lady, snappishly; "almost! But I never did do it
yet."

"Did you ever see Gineral Washin'ton, mem?" Rhoda asked. "I thought,
maybe, you was old enough. Misc Somers, she see him up yer to Kint River
a-crossin' to 'Napolis. He was a-swarin' at the cappen of the piriauger
and a dammin' of the Eas'n Shu, and he said they wan't no good rudes in
Marylan' nohow; that the Wes'n Shu was all red mud, an' the Eas'n Shu
yaller mud, an' the bay was jus' pizen. Misc Somers say she don't think
it was Gineral Washin'ton, caze he cuss so. She goin' to find out when
she kin git a book an' somebody to read outen it to her, caze she
dreffle smart."

"Grand-aunt Tilghman," Vesta interposed to the blank silence of the
room, "knew General Washington intimately."

"Do tell us!" cried Rhoda. "You kin be a right interestin' ole woman, I
reckon, ef you air so quar."

In the midst of a smile, in which the blind old lady herself joined, and
Mrs. Custis at the same time entered the room, Mrs. Tilghman spoke as
follows:

"I went to visi