Her name was Lucy. Or, perhaps, Marielle. Or, for the sake of variety, Lucretia.
And what a portentous proposition in pantalettes she was, to be sure!
“Rollo, Lucy and Mariette went Together.”
She talked just as exquisitely as did the Good Boy. Her selection of words was artistic, and her grammar immaculate. If William Pitt’s natural style was that of the “State Paper,” the colloquial standard of Lucy, Lucretia and Marielle was that of Madame de Stael.
She walked with primness; if she ran at all, it was with dignity; she did not giggle, did not romp, never made a mud pie, never pinched the Good Boy, and was such a formidable little thing, generally, that even the Bad Boy never snatched her bonnet. Such a thought as that of stealing a kiss from her never entered the head of any boy, good, bad or indifferent.
This unearthly girl always seemed an impossibility to me, after I became a grown-up, until I chanced to read about the daughter of John Adams, second President of these United States. Mr. Adams married a stately woman whose name was Abigail. What else could you expect, if not that a girl born to John Adams and his wife, Abigail, would be a tremendous little girl from the very start? Her parents named her Abigail,—as an additional guarantee against chewing gum, coca-cola, slang, and tomboyishness.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
At the age of eighteen, we find Miss Abigail Adams writing about her father as though he were some Sphinx or Pyramid that she had been viewing. Please go slow, as you read what this young lady says of her own papa: