Dorothy was a pretty girl, demure in her gray dress, but with bright Irish-blue eyes, long lashes, curling black hair and soft warm-hued skin. She had a particularly gay and joyous disposition, but was forbidden such pleasures as dancing and music. She went to the Friends’ meeting-house where the men and boys in their black coats and broad-brimmed hats sat on one side of the room, the women and girls in their mouse-colored bonnets and drab gowns on the other. Dolly’s father had done very well on the southern plantation, but when he went into business in Philadelphia he found many troubles. Living cost much more than in Virginia, a good deal of his property had been lost through the war and he failed, then ill health added its burden. A rich young Quaker lawyer named John Todd helped and advised him. He had fallen in love with Dolly, and though she meant never to marry, she consented, to please her father who had only a few months more to live. On two successive Sundays she went through the embarrassing Quaker ceremony of rising in meeting and saying she proposed taking John Todd in marriage; and standing up before the congregation, they were married in the somber bare-walled meeting-house. Mistress Todd lived for three years the life of a Quaker lady, and a devoted wife she was to her young husband. She always wore a cap of tulle, a gray gown, with a lace kerchief over her shoulders and a large brooch fastening it--no other ornaments. Except for her beauty she was like a hundred other young Quaker women in the city of brotherly love. In August of 1793 an epidemic of yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia. Todd sent his wife and their two little children to a summer resort on the river, where many of their friends took refuge. He stayed in the city to care for his father and mother but they died of the plague. Already ill himself he joined his family, only to give them the dread disease, he and the baby dying shortly after his arrival. Dolly too was stricken with the fever, but recovered. At first she was bowed down by her great loss. But Philadelphia was gay and gradually Mistress Todd began going about again, far more freely than in the days of her sober girlhood. She found herself really enjoying society and all the pleasures of the city. From a shy girl she developed into a most attractive woman. With her youth and her riches, it is no wonder that she became the object of much attention. Gentlemen would station themselves to see her pass, and her friends would say, “Really, Dolly, thou must hide thy face. There are so many staring at thee!”