“Take them,” says Aaron to his Bucktails. “They are yours, not his—those offices. He but gives you your own.”
Aaron, throughout those four years of Adams, tends the Jackson fires like a devotee. Van Ness is astonished at his enthusiasm.
“I should think you’d rest,” says he.
“Rest? I cannot rest. It is all I live for now.”
“But I don’t understand! You get nothing.”
The black eyes shoot forth the old ophidian sparks. “Sir, I get vengeance—and forget feelings!”
Adams comes to his White House end, and Jackson is elected in his place. Jackson comes to New York, and he and Aaron meet in the latter’s rooms—pleasant rooms, overlooking the Bowling Green. They light their long pipes, and sit opposite one another, smoking like dragons.