“Well, I know you’d admire me a heap more if I could go around like Jim Buchanan. Long-tailed coat and white vest and my head cocked to one side like a tom turkey admiring all the gals. He brought plenty of elegance to this office but if he’d had a little yokel grit in his gizzard the country wouldn’t be in this mess, maybe. One thing I know, you wouldn’t want me sashaying around the gals like Buchanan. You’d spit fire if I commenced that. Go on and fuss at me, Mary; it don’t bother me and I can still lick salt off the top of your head.” She pulled the cord of the little toy cannon and aimed it at him. The cork that was fired from it hit him in the stomach and he bent over, pretending to be mortally wounded, uttering grotesque groans. She clutched at him abruptly, holding both his arms. “Don’t do that!” she wailed. “It’s like my dream.” He put his arms around her, pressed her head against his chest. “You having dreams again? I thought you’d quit that foolishness.” “I’ve had the same one, over and over. I can’t see you but I can hear you groaning—like that. And I wake up in a cold sweat feeling something warm on my hands—like blood!” she moaned shuddering. He patted her head soberly. “You eat too many cakes at parties. Too much syllabub. Getting fat, too.” He pinched her playfully. “Me now, I’m one of Pharaoh’s lean kine. More bones than a shad and they all poke out and rattle. You should have married a pretty little feller, somebody like Steve Douglas.” “I didn’t want him. I wanted you.” “Well, you got me, Mary, not anything extra of a bargain but I did set you up so high you couldn’t go higher unless you got made queen of some place. You’re a queen now, queen of a torn and divided country all drowned in sorrow and hate and woe. But it won’t always be like that.—I wish to the Lord I knew what to do about that little man, Ulysses S. Grant! I reckon I’ll just have to give him command of the army.” He put her gently aside, letting care return to possess him. “He may be a fine soldier but he’s a dirty, drunken little man,” sniffed Mary, “and I don’t like his wife either.” “He fights better, dirty and drunk, than a lot of elegant fellers I’ve got in commands. If he can win battles he can go dirty as a hog and it won’t degrade him any in my estimation,” Lincoln declared. “As for his wife, you’ve got a bad habit of not liking wives, Mary.” “That’s not true. I like some of their wives—when they’re not cold and distant and look down their noses. It’s because I know how to buy pretty clothes and my bonnets become me. I do look nice when I’m dressed up, Abe Lincoln. And I know how to behave in company. After all there is a little respect due to my position,” she stated, complacently. He gave her a comradely pat and went back to his chair and the stack of papers he had put aside. “All right, Mama, you do the peacocking for this office and I’ll try to win the war,” he said, withdrawing into that remoteness that always baffled her.