Jefferson put his arms about his granddaughters. “Soon, my dears, there will come a frost and deep snows and sleet and the roads will become difficult or impassable. Then nobody will come to see us and you will be moping around the house because you are bored and lonely.” “Ann won’t,” declared her sister, “not if young Mister Bankhead has a horse long-legged enough to wade the drifts.” “And you,” flashed back her sister, “will be primping and ordering all the servants and the children about in case young Mister Coolidge should decide to come riding down the road.” “Mother says I’m too young,” sighed Ellen, “but you know, Grandfather, that fourteen isn’t terribly young. Why, mother was only seventeen when she married.” “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.” The years ahead of them! Thinking of those years brought back the old touch of anxiety. What would he be able to do for them, for these young things, born of his blood, hostages to fortune? “He who watches the pence need not be anxious about the pounds,” he quoted more of his old friend Franklin, dubiously aware that his audience were no longer listening. Slowly he walked back to his study, turning to close the door almost in the face of a man who escorted three women.