“I’ll go, aunt Rachel, you sit still and rest,” Emily volunteered quickly.
“I want her to sit here and listen to my news,” said the General, thumbing down his pipe. “You too, Emily. Let the women attend to the supper. About a dozen of ’em around, ought to be able to manage to feed us.”
Rachel had turned pale. “Oh, no!” she cried. “Not Pensacola again! Not another war. I can’t bear it. You said we’d stay at home. Mr. Jackson, you swore we’d live here in peace in our new Hermitage.” Distress sharpened her voice, her eyes dimmed, and she dabbed at them nervously with a corner of her white shawl.
“Compose yourself, my dear,” comforted her husband. “This news I’ve brought is exciting. You’ll be pleased. You’re being offered an opportunity to go where few women have ever gone—American women, anyway.”
“But I don’t want to go anywhere,” Rachel almost wailed. “I’ve been to Kentucky and Florida and Washington and Natchez and New Orleans and I hated all those places. I just want to stay in my home and I want you to stay in it with me. Mr. Eaton, we’ve been separated more than we have been together all these years we’ve been married, Mr. Jackson and I, and now were both getting old.”
“Old? You call yourself old, dear lady?” protested Eaton. “Why, the best part of your life is ahead of you.”
“It could be,” she sighed, pressing her hands together, strong, sun-browned hands that had helped to steer a heavy boat down the Ohio River, that had gripped the rein on many a weary ride through the wilderness, poured lead into bullet molds when savage enemies howled outside the stockades, spun thread, planted rosebushes, tenderly comforted many a child. “It could be,” she repeated, “if only I could have those years in my home with my husband.”
The General’s eyes twinkled. He rapped out his pipe on an andiron, brushed tobacco from his tight, snuff-colored trousers.
“I’m disappointed in you, my dear,” he bantered. “Here I bring you news that you could have a chance to cross an ocean and see a new, strange, fascinating world, and you don’t even want to hear about it.”
“The ocean?” gasped Emily. “Oh, no, uncle Jackson!”