She had been heavy with child that spring day, carrying the son who had only lived a few days, and when he protested that she must not tire herself she had given him a little push and said, “No, I must do it, I must plant them. Don’t you know that whatever I plant now will grow?” The years—the years! Almost thirty of them now since she had looked at him with dimming eyes, and said, “Promise that my children will never have a stepmother.” He had kept that promise. No other woman had ever approached the walled-off chamber of his heart where she was enshrined. There were times when, observing Patsy’s healthy brood, an impatient bitterness colored with a haunting kind of guilt would burn in him. Too many children—six of them in ten years—had been too much for Martha’s frail strength; yet Patsy had borne eleven easily and naturally. Childbirth to her had not been the draining, killing ordeal that had taken Martha, and their well-loved Maria also. He wondered often if Jack Eppes, Maria’s young husband, felt too that continuing, sickening weight of self-accusation. He got to his feet quickly, bidding the sad ghosts of the past to depart. “Off with you all now,” he ordered. “It’s time for lessons. Run, before your mother scolds you and me too.” “Race you?” screamed one Randolph to his sisters. “No, no—start fair!” they shrieked in protest. Jefferson called a halt. “Line up. Smallest one three paces ahead of the next. You here, Cornelia.” “I’m Ellen, Grandfather.” “All right. Some day I shall hang labels around all your necks. No inching forward now! You—big fellow, three paces to the rear. Now, when I drop my handkerchief—go!” Small feet flew, braids flopped, hats fell off, and happy squeals and shouts made pandemonium. Flushed and hot and breathless they straggled back to the dreariness of lessons, the older ones knowing that they must learn history and Latin verbs well, for inevitably before the day ended their grandfather would be catechizing them and putting on a sober, disappointed look if they missed the correct answers. There were letters waiting for replies and papers to be gone over and sorted in his study, but Jefferson discovered a reluctance in himself to begin these tasks. Pacing the long terrace to the south he came to the door of a little one-room building. This was what had always been called Honeymoon Cottage, the first room built at Monticello. He had lived a bachelor’s life in that one room in ’71 and, when Shadwell, his mother’s home, had burned, it had become his only and permanent home.