The children loved to pay a visit to Aunt Prissy. After they were all carefully seated, each child with a small seed-cake, the eager little faces would turn toward her, and one of the children would say, “Now, Aunt Prissy, we won’t drop crumbs on the floor, and we are sitting up straight, and we haven’t got our knees crossed, so won’t you please tell us about the time you saw General Washington with your own eyes?�
Aunt Prissy would count the stitches in her knitting, look up over her “specs,� and begin, “Well, well, children, it does seem to me you ought to know that story by heart. But never mind; I s’pose you know which you like best.
“Now let me see. It must have been in ’81, and I was nine years old, that our folks went to Salisbury to see General Washington.
“I had been in disgrace for a whole day, and for punishment it was decided that I must stay at home.
“My poor little heart almost broke, and I cried and made myself altogether disagreeable while the great lunch-baskets were being strapped behind the carriage, the huge bunches of roses to hurl at the general wrapped in wet cotton, and the family bundled into the carriages.
“After they had gone I wandered disconsolately about house and garden. As I was swinging on the gate and wondering what I would do next, I heard a great clatter of horses’ feet up the road, and in a few minutes a party of men in uniform came in sight. I had seen enough soldiers to know that these were Continental officers, so I was not frightened, but waited until they came up.
“A tall man on a white horse, with a cocked hat and plain uniform, rode forward, and with the kindest smile in the world, asked, ‘My little girl, can you give us a cup of coffee?’
“Now I was very proud of being able to make coffee and batter-cakes, so I said I would try. The gentlemen rode into the yard, their servants came forward to take the horses, and I showed the party into the house. Mammy Dilsie had gone to the quarters on an errand, so I had things my own way.
“A fire was blazing in the huge kitchen fireplace. We didn’t have cooking-stoves in those days, but did our baking in great round iron ovens, with lids to heap coals on, and our boiling in pots swung over the coals on cranes. I raked out a nice bed of coals, filled the big coffee-pot, and soon had it simmering, then put the pan for the batter-cakes on to heat, made them up, had them nicely browned in a trice, set out a cold ham, and then invited the gentlemen in to breakfast.
“They came, laughing and talking, said the coffee was the best they had ever tasted, the cakes delicious. I poured the coffee, and the gentlemen laughed and joked me, and one of them asked how I happened to be at home all alone.