Strong men had wept enough tears to put the Potomac in flood these last years, Lincoln was thinking. “When will it end?” he said aloud, with a groan. John Hay, his faithful secretary, looked up quickly from his desk in the outer room. “When we’ve killed all the Rebs, I reckon,” said Tad complacently. “But if we killed ’em all I’d have a lot of uncles killed, wouldn’t I? I had one killed at Chickamauga already, my uncle Helm.—He was a general,” he told John Hay. “It’s happened in a good many families, Tad,” Hay said. “That’s because we’re all Americans.” “Well, my mother was Southern to begin with,” declared Tad, “so I’m kind of half Southern but I got over it.” “Southerners are good folks, son,” Lincoln admonished him. “Fine people most of them. Just mistaken, that’s all—just mistaken.” “They fight good,” was Tad’s comment, as they went down the hall. Abraham Lincoln always stepped carefully and quietly in this big house. He had never been at home in the White House. He always had a secret, haunting feeling of guilt as though he were a guest and a strange, uneasy, even an unworthy, guest. Mary, his wife, had no such inhibitions. She loved to sweep down the wide stairway, her widely flounced skirts moving elegantly over her hoops, her tight small bosom, her round white arms and her round white chin held proudly and complacently. All this was her due, her manner said, and her husband’s humility and trick of effacing himself occasionally irked and angered her. She was writing a letter at a desk when they entered her sitting room. The intent creases in her brow softened as the boy ran to her. “Look Mama—look at Papa’s new solid gold watch! He got it for the ’Mancipation Proclamation.” Lincoln pulled out the watch, grinning boyishly. Mary’s eyes brightened as she fingered the handsomely engraved case. “Why, it must be terribly expensive,” she approved. “What does Tad mean about the Proclamation?” “I sent a copy to Chicago. They auctioned it off.” “For three thousand dollars,” added Tad. “My Heaven, you mean they got three thousand dollars just for that piece of paper?” exclaimed Mary. “It was a pretty important paper, Mary, to a million or so poor black people anyway. A copy would be a historic memento a hundred years from now. Understand—” he fended off the small glint of avidity that so often troubled him in Mary Lincoln’s pale gray eyes “—this was a charity thing. For their fair out there in Chicago.” “You only made one copy?” She turned the watch in her small, plumb fingers. He hedged uneasily sensing the trend of her thinking. “I made one or two for old friends. No—” he raised a hand “—I’m not making any more, so put that idea out of your mind.” She flared. “Why do you always accuse me of things I’m not even thinking?” she cried angrily. “Maybe because I know you better than you know yourself, my dear,” he said gently. “You were thinking that this is a nice watch but that three thousand dollars is three thousand dollars.”