"Me?" Abe drew himself up. "What's going to become of me? I'm going to be President."
Elizabeth looked at him, a lanky barefoot boy with trousers too short. His shirt was in rags. His black hair was tousled. She sank into a chair, shaking with laughter. "A pretty President you'd make, now wouldn't you?"
She had no sooner spoken than she wanted to take back the words. All of the joy went out of his face. Sally was too angry to notice.
"Maybe you're going to be President," she said. "But first you'd better learn to behave."
"I—I was just funning, Sally."
Something in his voice made Sally look up. She saw the hurt expression in his eyes. "I know you were," she said hastily. "I'm not mad any more."
Abe ate his dinner in silence. He did not seem to be the same boy who had been cutting up only a few minutes before. Elizabeth kept telling herself that she should not have laughed at him. He did try to show off sometimes. But he was a good boy. She thought more of him than of any of the other young folks in Pigeon Creek. Not for anything would she have hurt his feelings. When he pushed back his stool, she followed him out into the yard.
"About your being President," she said. "I wasn't aiming to make fun of you. I just meant that you—with all your tricks and jokes—"
"I reckon I know what you meant," said Abe quietly. "All the same, Mrs. Crawford, I don't always mean to delve and grub and such like."
There was a look of determination on his face that she had not seen before. "I think a heap of you," she went on, "and I don't want to see you disappointed. It's a fine thing to be ambitious. But don't let reading about George Washington give you notions that can't come to anything."