Hence, when Mrs. Lightfoot Lee was announced, and the two
sisters were ushered into the presidential parlour, she put on a
coldly patronizing air, and in reply to Madeleine's hope that she
found Washington agreeable, she intimated that there was much in
Washington which struck her as awful wicked, especially the
women; and, looking at Sybil, she spoke of the style of dress in
this city which she said she meant to do what she could to put a
stop to. She'd heard tell that people sent to Paris for their gowns,
just as though America wasn't good enough to make one's clothes!
Jacob (all Presidents' wives speak of their husbands by their first
names) had promised her to get a law passed against it. In her town
in Indiana, a young woman who was seen on the street in such
clothes wouldn't be spoken to. At these remarks, made with an air
and in a temper quite unmistakable, Madeleine became
exasperated beyond measure, and said that "Washington would be
pleased to see the President do something in regard to
dress-reform--or any other reform;" and with this allusion to the
President's ante-election reform speeches, Mrs. Lee turned her
back and left the room, followed by Sybil in convulsions of
suppressed laughter, which would not have been suppressed had
she seen the face of their hostess as the door shut behind them, and
the energy with which she shook her head and said: "See if I don't
reform you yet, you--jade!"
Mrs. Lee gave Ratcliffe a lively account of this interview, and he
laughed nearly as convulsively as Sybil over it, though he tried to
pacify her by saying that the President's most intimate friends
openly declared his wife to be insane, and that he himself was the
person most afraid of her.
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