t from where she was
entertaining their mothers, crept upstairs and hid under her bed.
Presently Lady Washington entered and took a seat before a large table.
A man-servant then brought a large empty bowl, also lemons, sugar,
spices and rum, with which she proceeded to prepare the punch. The young
people under the bed thereupon fell to giggling until finally she became
aware of their presence. Much offended, or at least pretending to be,
she ordered them from the room. They retired with such precipitancy that
one of them fell upon the stairway and broke her arm.

Another story is to the effect that one morning Nelly Custis, Miss
Dandridge and some other girls who were visiting Nelly came down to
breakfast dressed dishabille and with their hair done up in curl papers.
Mrs. Washington did not rebuke them and the meal proceeded normally
until the announcement was made that some French officers of rank and
young Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, who was interested in Miss Custis,
had driven up outside, whereupon the foolish virgins sprang up to leave
the room in order to make more conventional toilets. But Mrs. Washington
forbade their doing so, declaring that what was good enough for General
Washington was good enough for any guest of his.

She spoiled George Washington Custis as she had his father, but was
more severe with Eleanor or Nelly. Washington bought the girl a fine
imported harpsichord, which cost a thousand dollars and which is still
to be seen at Mount Vernon, and the grandmother made Nelly practise upon
it four or five hours a day. "The poor girl," relates her brother,
"would play and cry, and cry and play, for long hours, under the
immediate eye of her grandmother." For no shirking was allowed.

The truth would seem to be that Lady Washington was more severe with the
young--always excepting Jacky and George--than was her husband. He would
often watch their games with evident enjoyment and would encourage them
to continue their amusements and not to regard him. He was the confidant
of their hopes and fears and even amid tremendous cares of state found
time to give advice about their love affairs. For he was a very human
man, after all, by no means the marble statue sculptured by some
historians.

Yet no doubt Mrs. Washington's severity proceeded from a sense of duty
and the fitness of things rather than from any harshness of heart. The
little old lady who wrote: "Kiss Marie. I send her two handkerchiefs to
w