“And look what happened to me!” cried her mother. “Six of you great greedy daughters, all clamoring that you should have beaux before you are out of pinafores.”
“When you are seventeen, Ellen,” Jefferson assured the girl, “I personally shall dispatch a very polite invitation to young Mister Coolidge, whoever he is, to come calling at Monticello.”
“He won’t want to come then. He’ll think I’m an old maid and I will be! He’ll be looking for somebody young and fresh like Virginia.”
“Hah! I wouldn’t look at him,” sniffed redheaded Virginia, who had a crop of bright coppery freckles like her grandfather. “By the time he’s an old man he’ll be fat as a pig and probably grunt when he moves and squeal when he’s fed.”
“He will not!” flared Ellen. “Anyway you’re just jealous. She doesn’t like having red hair, Grandfather, and she hates every one of us who haven’t got it.”
“Why, I have red hair and I’m very proud of it!” he exclaimed. “Shame on you all for quarreling among yourselves. I used to have a wise old friend named Benjamin Franklin—”
“We know about him. You told us before.”
“We know what he said too,” put in Ellen patiently. “If we don’t hang together we may all hang separately.” Definitely, she was thinking, grandfather could at times be a bit tiresome. “And a penny saved is a penny earned.”
“But not one of us ever sees a penny!”
“A sad situation,” remarked Jefferson, rummaging through the pocket of his worn old green breeches. “Ah, I do seem to have a few pennies. Let me count. There must be one apiece. Now”—he announced as he laid a coin in each warm eager palm—“you have each the foundation for a fortune. Guard it well, for there are long years ahead of you.”