“Maybe some of those mean Secesh over there stole my nanny goat! I have to go out and see if the boys have heard anything about her. She was a nice goat. She liked me; she licked my fingers. She wouldn’t just run off like Papa said.”
“Maybe,” remarked Hay, “she went over to see why General Meade let Lee’s army get away from him. Go hunt your goat and don’t bother your father. He’s had people swarming in there for the last hour.”
“All the women,” observed Tad, wise beyond his years, “have got a boy they want to be a colonel or a captain. And all the men want to know why Papa doesn’t take Richmond.”
“Get on out of here, Tad, or I won’t give you any Christmas present.”
“You know what I want,” stated Tad at the door. “My nanny goat back.”
2
The man in the armchair across the desk looked formidable and expensive. Abraham Lincoln looked down at his own long, dusty, and wrinkled black breeches and unconsciously gave a hitch to his sagging coat, to his crooked black satin tie that had a perverse tendency to sidle around under his ear.
The visitor’s swallow-tailed coat was pressed and elegant; his shirt was crisp with ruffles, his heavy watch chain held a jeweled seal. He rested plump white hands, covered with yellow gloves, on the gold head of a cane. His homely face was cold-eyed and stern. He had refused to state his errand to the people in the outer office and Lincoln knew how thoroughly they deplored his stubborn insistence on seeing as many who called as possible.
“Some day,” prophesied Nicolay gloomily, “you’re going to admit the man with the little derringer hid inside a boot, Mr. President.”
“With the fences down all around, Nicolay, why put a bar over the one door,” Lincoln had argued calmly. “If they want to kill me they will unless you bolt me inside an iron box. I’m the people’s hired man. They put me here. I must listen to what they want to say.”