“When the dogwood is in bloom,” she murmured softly.
“Jensie!” Jeanne cried, seizing her by the shoulders and looking far back into her deep, mysterious eyes. “If I tried to make that a real picture, would you help me?”
“I—I’d do my double-durndest!” Jensie laughed in spite of herself.
“All right, Jensie.” Jeanne was like a spring day. Sunshine and joy came one moment. The next there were clouds and rain. “All right, little girl.” Her shoulders drooped. “We—we might try it. You never can tell.”
She dropped into a chair before the fire.
Jensie went about the humble task of scrubbing the floor. Florence insisted upon helping her, so together, on hands and knees, they made their way back and forth, back and forth across the large room.
All this time Jeanne sat in deep thought. Once she murmured to herself, “It was before the fire in Rutledge Tavern that the great one, Abraham Lincoln, who with all his greatness was so simple and kind, sat for long hours dreaming of the future, reading his fortune in the flames, reading it to a girl, Ann Rutledge who, as simple and kind as he, understood.
“And then—” She stared hard at the fire. “Then the girl was gone forever, and he had to go on alone, all the way alone.
“He was an American, this great Lincoln, and I am only a poor little French girl.
“But perhaps—” She stared once more at the flames of orange and gold. “Perhaps I might make people understand and love him more if I could give them a true picture of the mountain country where he was born.