“No, Mary—no, no!” protested Lincoln. “Bob couldn’t do that.”
“I don’t know why not? Certainly your family are entitled to respect, Abraham Lincoln!”
“You don’t understand, Mama,” said Robert unhappily. “I was thankful I’d been able to duck away from those soldiers Mr. Stanton had detailed in New York. I didn’t want to be Robert Lincoln. I wanted to be nobody. Then when I got off here in Washington, there was that escort! Troops to guard me, as though I were a crown prince or something. A coward of a prince!”
“No, no!” Mary upset her cup in her agitation. “I still say you must finish your education. You must graduate from Harvard. You’ll be much more valuable to the country as an educated man than just another private in the army. Even if your father gave you a commission—”
“I don’t want a commission. Not if it has to be given to me,” Robert cried. “I’d deserve all the contempt I saw in some of those men’s faces if I took a commission I hadn’t earned.”
Lincoln’s face relaxed in a slow smile. There were times when his older son troubled him, but now a quiet pride warmed his spirit. But his heart sank again when he saw the stony set of Mary’s mouth, the flush that always heated her face when she was angry and determined to carry her point. She would not change. Her attitude was the same as that with which she had faced down General Sickles and Senator Harris not too long ago. They had inquired, coldly, why Robert was not in the service. The boy should, declared the General, have been in uniform long since. Mary had talked them down then, firmly, just as she would talk down all Robert’s arguments now. But it was a joy to Lincoln that Robert did have pride and perhaps a mind of his own.
Mary’s eyes were already glittering behind their pale lashes. Now the shine was exasperation but in a moment, after her fashion, it would melt into tears. Robert’s chin was jutting and his hands trembled on the back of his chair. Lincoln interposed quickly trying to ease the tension, gain a postponement of a crisis.
“Let’s talk this over later,” he suggested. “Let’s not spoil Christmas morning with an argument. Did Tad eat any breakfast, Mama?”
“No, he didn’t.” Mary got her control back with a gusty breath. “He wouldn’t even take time to drink his milk. He took it with him and likely he’s upset the glass all over the carpet by this time.”
“Well, let’s go and see what he found under the Christmas tree.”