All the fine china had been taken down from the cupboards and washed, and every wineglass on the place rubbed to a shine. Burwell himself had polished the silver, not trusting any other servant to that special task because Mister Tom wanted things right when he took a fancy notion. Right now he had the notion and had it through and through.
Cayce, the new young body servant Burwell was training, was pressing his master’s new wool pantaloons and the old Negro stood by, supervising and grumbling.
“Old times in Washington,” he declared, “Mister Tom wouldn’t be seen in old plain long-leg breeches like them there. Up there we got him up all dandified in white satin knee breeches and long silk stockings and a swingy-tail coat. Ruffles all starched.—Boy, did he strut! ‘Mister President!’ everybody say, and bow, and some ladies scrooch way down till they petticoats lay all out on the floor. Won’t see no more times like that. But anyhow, we puttin’ the big pot in the little one, this Christmas.”
“He got Dely ironing a ruffled shirt right now,” insisted Cayce, “but he say he ain’t wearin’ no buckle shoes. They hurt his feet. Dunno how I git them old slippers off’n him, but Miss Patsy say I got it to do.”
The young Randolphs and Carrs and Francis Eppes, all red-cheeked and excited, were running in and out of the house, lugging in branches of cedar and pine and holly, scattering needles and berries and trash over the shining floors so that two women had to follow around with brooms and mops to shine up to suit Miss Patsy. But in the library, where a great fire burned under the mirrored mantel and bookshelves mounted to the ceiling on every wall, Thomas Jefferson sat in his revolving chair and looked long into the gold and scarlet leap of the flames.
His thin legs were clothed in a disreputable old pair of homemade linsey-woolsey breeches, his woolen stockings sagging around his ankles. His daughter looked at him and sighed, forbearing to nag at him, since he had promised to be properly and elegantly dressed for the Christmas dinner.
“I wish he’d dress up,” she murmured to her daughter, Ann. “Aunt Anna will be driving in soon and whenever he looks shabby and uncared for, Aunt Anna always looks at me as though it were my fault.”
“Let him be,” urged Ann. “He’s old, Mother, and tired and he has earned the right to do as he pleases in his own house. At least he is letting us have a real Christmas, so maybe people will stop saying Thomas Jefferson is a great man but that he is also a heathen.”
“Do they say things like that, Ann?” asked her mother anxiously. “Surely not.”
“I’ve heard them. So has Jeff. So I asked him straightway this morning, ‘Grandfather, do you really believe in God?’”