"What are you doing, lover?"
"Come here and I'll tell you." He made a seat for her of four of the big books. His arm went around her and he laid his head against her shoulder.
"Mary," he said, "I am carving a pedestal."
"You are what?"
He explained. He laughed a great deal as he
gave her an account of his conversation with the Major and Randy that morning.
"You see before you," with a final flourish, "a potential great man. A Thomas Jefferson, up-to-date; a John Randolph of the present day; the Lincoln of my own time; the ancestor of Fiddle's great-grandchildren."
She rumpled his hair. "I like you as you are."
He caught her hand and held it. "But you'd like me on—a pedestal?"
"If you'll let me help you carve it."