"What difference would that make?" I demanded. "A warrior has no place on a door-panel. Besides, it's 'Old Hickory.' I'd know that high white hat anywhere! Wasn't I born and raised in the shadow of it?"
"Dear me! But maybe you are mistaken," mother interposed gently. "It is quite a distance across the road—it may be a peculiar pattern of Batten—"
Before she had finished I darted up the steps and scrambled around in the bureau drawer for my opera-glasses.
"Take these out to the porch and look," I begged, as I came down again and found the two still facing each other with a quizzical smile. She carried out my suggestion and presently came back, still smiling.
"It's Andrew," she reported, reaching out for my opera-bag and slipping the glasses into it; "it's Andrew beyond a doubt; but, dearie, it can't outlast two washings."
This assurance comforted me somewhat every time I had to look at the military door-panel, but on cleaning days when the parlor curtains at the cottage were tucked up and I discerned the large, colored portrait of Mr. Roosevelt which smiled sunnily down from the space above the mantelpiece there was no such consoling reflection.
About this time it was that I grew to know Neva, the daughter of the house. Her family called her "Nevar," most nasally, after the manner of "ordinary" people in the South; but I soon found qualities in her that made me forgive the silk gowns and jeweled combs, aye, even the Andrew Jackson.
In the first place I discovered that she entertained a most profound admiration for me, especially for my pronunciation and finger-nails. Of these she at once set about a frank imitation which later extended to things more impersonal. Once, after I had shown her my books and she had breathed a long, ecstatic sigh over the pictures in the library I found that the hero of San Juan was falling into disfavor as a parlor ornament. Neva had been especially impressed with a small oval portrait of my childhood's hero, Lord Byron, which mother had found once in a curio-shop in New Orleans and brought home to me.
"Who is he?" she asked, her eyes fixed admiringly on the matchless face. I explained to her.
"Is he dead?" she inquired softly.