Very few people had any thought of vacations then. True, Washington had a dull spell when Congress was not in session, and some of the people retired to country places or went to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, or to Bladensburg to drink medicated waters. But Madame Badeau kept her school going from eight to twelve for the children's classes. They were all composed of girls, for while Madame admired well-bred young men very much, she could not tolerate growing boys. The afternoons were devoted to what were called fancy branches. Young women came to learn embroidery and lace-making, the duties on foreign goods were so high, and now the risk of importing was so great.
There began to be a different feeling about education. Intelligent women were coming to the fore. To be sure, science was considered unwomanly, but handsome and well-bred Mrs. Gallatin knew enough on many subjects to entertain her husband's guests charmingly. Everybody would have been horrified at the thought of a woman's college, and if a woman's convention had been announced it would have created more indignation than the war was raising.
Yet women with but few early advantages went to Madame Badeau to be trained in conversation and the art of writing polite notes, and some who had a facility for verse-making to learn how an acrostic was put together, or an anagram, and the proper fashion for congratulatory verses. A few women poets had appeared, but the French "blue stockings" were quoted in derision. Still, it had occurred to other women beside Mrs. Adams that the mothers of sons trained for perilous times needed to be intelligent, at least.
For the first time Annis was thrown with a variety of girls near her own age. None of them were like Varina—but, then, they were not like each other. How strange there should be so many different kinds of people in the world! It amazed her.
Jaqueline was much interested in her unfolding. There was a delicious quaintness about her that contact with Madame Badeau brought out. She had some very clear ideas too, and there was so much to write about.
"I shall have to send a letter to mamma one week and to Charles the next," she said sagely. "Then I shall not tell the same things over."
"That is an excellent idea. You are a bright little girl," returned Jaqueline with a smile.
"And it will save my own time. Jaqueline, can't we go to Washington some time and really see it? One of the girls called me a country lass because I did not know about the streets and the way everything ran. And how queer they should be named after the letters and numbers! What will they do when the letters are exhausted?—and there are but twenty-six."
"There are the numbers, you know."
"But the numbers run criss-cross. Do you suppose they will go on as we work a sampler, make little letters and then Old-English text? One girl has the most beautiful Old-English alphabet worked in red silk, but it is very hard to tell the letters."