In Virginia the responsibility of curbing the fun-loving community devolved upon the good burgesses, travelling down in their sloops to hold session at Williamsburg. We find them making laws restraining the jolly planters. A man could be presented for gaming, swearing, drunkenness, selling crawfish on Sunday, becoming engaged to more than one woman at a time, and, as we have said, there was always the ducking-stool for "brabbling women who go about from house to house slandering their neighbors:--a melancholy proof that even in those Arcadian days the tongue required control." CHAPTER IX MARY BALL'S GUARDIAN AND HER GIRLHOOD Except for the bequest in her brother-in-law's will, nothing whatever is known of Mary Ball for nine years--indeed, until her marriage with Augustine Washington in 1730. The traditions of these years are all based upon the letters found by the Union soldier,--genuine letters, no doubt, but relating to some other Mary Ball who, in addition to the flaxen hair and May-blossom cheeks, has had the honor of masquerading, for nearly forty years, as the mother of Washington, and of having her story and her letters placed reverently beneath the corner-stone of the Mary Washington monument. Mary Ball, only thirteen years old when her mother died, would naturally be taken to the Westmoreland home of her sister Elizabeth, wife of Samuel Bonum and only survivor, besides herself, of her mother's children. Elizabeth was married and living in her own house seven years before Mrs. Hewes died. The Bonum residence was but a few miles distant from that of Mrs. Hewes, and a mile and a half from Sandy Point, where lived the "well-beloved and trusty friend George Eskridge." Major Eskridge "seated" Sandy Point in Westmoreland about 1720. The old house was standing until eight years ago, when it was destroyed by fire. He had seven children; the fifth child, Sarah, a year older than Mary Ball and doubtless her friend and companion. Under the "tutelage and government" of a man of wealth, eminent in his profession of the law, the two little girls would naturally be well and faithfully instructed. We can safely assume, considering all these circumstances, that Mary Ball's girlhood was spent in the "Northern Neck of Virginia," and at the homes of Major Eskridge and her only sister; and that these faithful guardians provided her with as liberal an education as her station demanded and the times permitted there cannot be the least doubt. Her own affectionate regard for them is emphatically proven by the fact that she gave to her first-born son the name of George Eskridge, to another son that of Samuel Bonum, and to her only daughter that of her sister Elizabeth.