“A stuffy old place like that?” She sighed. “And Bamie’s house is just as bad. Now I know how it will be: ‘Remember your father is governor. Do him credit.’ Sometimes I wish you were a plain man, Father, like other girls’ fathers.” “You wish no such thing! You bask in all the publicity! Anyway I am a plain man. You don’t see me wearing a top hat, do you? Or putting on airs?” “Sometimes,” she admitted, “I wish you would dress up a little more and wear all your medals.” “Let’s all be just nice plain people,” suggested her stepmother. Albany, Edith decided, was not going to be an easy place to hold the children to democratic standards. The governor’s children might be expected not to turn somersaults on the lawn of the executive mansion, or sail kites off the roof. Here at Sagamore Hill the younger ones had had the freedom of the place, nothing was closed to them. Even in Roosevelt’s workshop under the roof, the door was always open and she had seen her husband often writing or dictating an important speech with Archie or Kermit crawling about his feet or pushing a toy train and shouting “choo choo choo!” Important visitors were often left cooling their heels in the parlor while Roosevelt was out having a rough and tumble in the hay with the children or down at the dock teaching one of them how to dive. When he was with his children he was as young as they were, and though this made him more lovable it could be exasperating, too, and at times embarrassing. Like the time a maid had misinterpreted the mission of two delegations of visitors, leaving a group of important men to cool their heels on the front porch while she waited on some startled and bewildered clergy in the parlor. But if there were times when Edith Roosevelt yearned for a little privacy, she kept the thought to herself. To be ignored and eventually forgotten would be a living death to a man like Theodore Roosevelt, with a nature so ebullient and outgiving. He had to express himself either vocally or by action just as he had had to risk his life and health fighting with his Rough Riders in Cuba. There had been a job to be done, a wrong to be righted, and his fierce sense of justice and obligation would not let him ignore it. Of course the excitement had appealed to him, too, just as the thrill of riding and roping cattle on the Dakota ranch had done, the place where already he had sunk too much of the money left him by his father. The only recreation or relaxation that he knew was in doing something vigorous and different. There was, Edith sighed to herself, nothing restful about him. “Now,” she put in a maternal admonition, “there will be no pillow fights tonight. Everyone must go quietly to sleep, there will be enough excitement in the morning.” “At least,” said her husband, “may I be allowed to help them hang up their stockings?”