Robert stood up. His face was very white. “Pa—and Mama—I told lies coming down on that train. I told them I was coming home to enlist. I’ve got to get into the Army—I’ve got to! Those men on that train, they were dirty and shabby and some hadn’t shaved or washed in a long time, and most of them were rough and some ignorant but every one of them was a better man than I was! I could feel them looking at me—with contempt at first. It was in every man’s mind that I was a bounty boy. A shirker. Hiding behind a screen of cash! I was thankful nobody knew my name.” “You could have told them your name,” insisted his mother. “You could have made them respect you as the son of the President.” “No, Mary—no, no!” protested Lincoln. “Bob couldn’t do that.” “I don’t know why not? Certainly your family are entitled to respect, Abraham Lincoln!” “You don’t understand, Mama,” said Robert unhappily. “I was thankful I’d been able to duck away from those soldiers Mr. Stanton had detailed in New York. I didn’t want to be Robert Lincoln. I wanted to be nobody. Then when I got off here in Washington, there was that escort! Troops to guard me, as though I were a crown prince or something. A coward of a prince!” “No, no!” Mary upset her cup in her agitation. “I still say you must finish your education. You must graduate from Harvard. You’ll be much more valuable to the country as an educated man than just another private in the army. Even if your father gave you a commission—” “I don’t want a commission. Not if it has to be given to me,” Robert cried. “I’d deserve all the contempt I saw in some of those men’s faces if I took a commission I hadn’t earned.” Lincoln’s face relaxed in a slow smile. There were times when his older son troubled him, but now a quiet pride warmed his spirit. But his heart sank again when he saw the stony set of Mary’s mouth, the flush that always heated her face when she was angry and determined to carry her point. She would not change. Her attitude was the same as that with which she had faced down General Sickles and Senator Harris not too long ago. They had inquired, coldly, why Robert was not in the service. The boy should, declared the General, have been in uniform long since. Mary had talked them down then, firmly, just as she would talk down all Robert’s arguments now. But it was a joy to Lincoln that Robert did have pride and perhaps a mind of his own. Mary’s eyes were already glittering behind their pale lashes. Now the shine was exasperation but in a moment, after her fashion, it would melt into tears. Robert’s chin was jutting and his hands trembled on the back of his chair. Lincoln interposed quickly trying to ease the tension, gain a postponement of a crisis. “Let’s talk this over later,” he suggested. “Let’s not spoil Christmas morning with an argument. Did Tad eat any breakfast, Mama?”