“Why couldn’t we have a series of tableaux on his early life, Cousin Roxy. Just look out there at Shad. He’s the image of some of the early pictures, and he never gets his hair cut before spring, he says, just like the horses. Let’s try him.”
Once they had started, it seemed easy. The first scene could be the cabin in the clearing. Jean would be Nancy Lincoln, the young mother, seated by the fireplace, teaching her boy his letters from the book at her knee.
“Dug Moffat will be right for that,” said Jean happily. “He’s about six. Then we must show the boy Lincoln at school. Out in Illinois, that was, wasn’t it, Cousin Roxy, where he borrowed some books from the teacher, and the rain soaked the covers, so he split his first wood to earn them.”
Cousin Roxy promised to hunt up all the necessary historical data in the Judge’s library at home, and they went after it in earnest. Freddie Herrick, the groceryman’s boy over at the Center, was chosen for Abe at this stage, and Kit coaxed Mr. Ricketts, the mailcarrier, to be the teacher.
“Go long now,” he exclaimed jocularly, when she first proposed it. “I ain’t spoke a piece in public since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I used to spout, ‘Woodman, spare that tree.’ Yep. Say it right off smart as could be. Then they had me learn ‘Old Ironsides.’ Ever hear that one? Begins like this.” He waved one arm oracularly in the air. “ ‘Aye, tear her tattered ensign down, long has it waved on high.’ Once they got me started, they couldn’t stop me. No, sirree. Went right ahead and learned ’em, one after the other. ‘At midnight in his guarded tent, the Turk lay dreaming of the hour—’ That was a Jim dandy to roll out. And—and the second chapter of Matthew, and Patrick Henry’s speech, and all sorts of sech stuff, but I’d be shy as a rabbit if you put me up before everybody now.”
Still, he finally consented, when Kit promised him his schoolmaster desk could stand with its back half to the audience to spare him from embarrassment.
“Oh, it’s coming on splendidly,” she cried to Cousin Roxy, once she was sure of Mr. Ricketts. “We’ll have Shad for the young soldier in the Black Hawk war, and three of the big boys for Indians. And then, let’s see, the courting of Ann Rutledge. Let’s have Piney for Ann. She has just that wide-eyed, old daguerreotype look. Give her a round white turned down collar and a cameo breast-pin, and she’ll be ideal.”
The preparations went on enthusiastically. Rehearsals were held partly at Greenacres, partly over at the Judge’s, and always there were refreshments afterwards. Mrs. Gorham and Jean prepared coffee and cocoa, with cake, but Cousin Roxy would send Ben down cellar after apples and nuts, with a heaping dish of hermits and doughnuts, and tall pitchers of creamy milk.
Doris was very much excited over her part. She was to be the little sister of the young soldier condemned to death for falling asleep on sentinel duty. And she felt it all, too, just as if it was, as Shad said, ‘for real.’ Shad was the President in this too, but disguised in a long old-fashioned shawl of Cousin Roxy’s and the Judge’s tall hat, and a short beard. He stood beside his desk, ready to leave, when Doris came in and pleaded for the boy who was to be shot at dawn.
“I know I’m going to cry real tears,” said Doris tragically. “I can’t help but feel it all right in here,” pressing her hand to her heart.