“That’s the trouble with the whole country,” said Roosevelt. “In Albany there are probably people already waiting, wanting something but wanting no part of the financial responsibility of paying for it. The President and Congress are bombarded constantly with requests to give benefits to certain areas and groups of people but all those things cost money and the money has to come from the people, the ordinary people like you and me, gentlemen.” How many times, he wondered, as the delegation left reluctantly, grumbling among themselves, would he hear the same arguments in the next two years? All at once, standing in his own doorway looking out at the dark night sky which was already beginning to lower and spit a few more flakes of snow, he felt a dread of the new task that till this moment had stimulated and exhilarated him. The peace and quiet of Sagamore Hill suddenly was doubly dear. The fields and hills over which he had roamed with his children, the fringe of wood where he had chopped down trees, exulting in every blow of the ax, at seeing white chips fly wide. Here, he was thinking, he could have lived, writing his books, watching over the growth and education of his children, getting fatter with the years perhaps, less able to swim and dive and wield an ax, or flash down a snowy slope on new skis. He knew, however, a life like that was not for him. Action was essential to him, positive and vigorous, and he could no more keep out of public affairs than he could resign himself to sitting by a fireside all the rest of his days. He could never sit still there. He was always jumping up to discipline the blazing logs with firm jabs of the poker, or hurl on more wood with a heave and a grunt. He went to the fire now and found Edith sitting there with her usual piece of sewing in her lap. “It seems to be getting colder,” she remarked. “Those upstairs rooms are really chilly. I do hope the governor’s house has an adequate heating system; I dread the colds we get in winter and Ted’s chest is not really strong.” “There we’ll have steam no doubt, and boilers to burn coal. I’ve never been inside the place but once and that was quite long ago. It’s a gloomy old pile but we have to live in it.” “It can’t be any harder to heat than this house,” said Edith, trying not to let any of the odd feeling creep into her voice, the slight reservation she had never voiced even to herself but that had always been present deep in her mind—her own feeling about Sagamore Hill. After all, it had been built for another women, the girl whom her husband had deeply loved, Alice Lee. And it had been originally named Leeholm. That Alice Lee had died before the first stone of the foundation had been laid could not but remind Theodore now and then of what he had lost, especially when he looked at Alice Lee’s daughter, brisk, vigorous little Alice born with an assertive nature, blunt and forthright, like his own.