“Let Mr. Field attend to it. It’s his business to keep the people in order, aunt Rachel. You are a hostess with a houseful of guests, you have enough to worry you.” Rachel went reluctantly into the house, and presently every room was ablaze with firelight and candlelight. The other women and children drifted in, and Andy came too, standing before the fire balancing uneasily on first one foot, then the other. “Mama,” he began abruptly, “you know Papa said he was going to give me that chestnut colt. Why can’t he give it to me for Christmas? He gave Jack the sorrel and promised the chestnut to me when it was grown. Now every time I speak to Philip about it he says it’s not old enough to break yet. A two-year-old colt ought to be old enough to break to the saddle. You know that, Mama.” Rachel looked harassed. “Son, Philip knows about the horses more than I. Your Papa has every confidence in Philip’s judgment. You have horses to ride. Good safe horses too. And that new saddle and bridle and everything. Goodness knows they cost plenty.” “You’re too young to ride a stallion colt, Andy,” put in one of his Donelson aunts. “I should ride some old bag of bones like Duke, I suppose?” flared the boy. “Duke is a noble old horse,” stated Rachel sternly. “He carried your Papa through two wars. He’s earned his rest and feed.” “And he still pays for his keep by dancing on three feet whenever anybody whistles ‘Yankee Doodle’,” laughed Emily. “Andy, you’re only fourteen. Plenty of time for you to wrestle fractious stallion colts.” “You could be killed,” worried his mother, “and you’ve got to live to comfort me in my old age. Sometimes I feel like it’s coming on mighty fast.” “Nonsense, Rachel, you’ve got twenty good years ahead of you,” argued one of her sisters-in-law, “and all the struggle is behind. This fine house now—and everything fine in it and all the worry behind you.” “If only they don’t decide that Mr. Jackson has to save the country in some other awful place far from home!” sighed Rachel. “I declare, with millions of men now in this country there ought to be enough to keep it going peacefully without Mr. Jackson being dragged away from this place again.” “The trouble is,” remarked the other woman, “that Andrew Jackson was never born for peace. Not that he starts any trouble but the minute anything does start Andrew is the man they look for to put an end to it.” “He’d start a fight soon enough if anybody picked on Mama,” declared Andy. “He’s done that already. That’s why he’s carrying that bullet around right close to his heart.” “Andy!” protested Emily, shocked at the quick whitening of Rachel’s face. The Dickinson duel was never spoken of in her presence. “That was very bad taste, Andy,” reproved his aunt, “and you should know better.” “But it’s true!” protested the boy, his voice breaking in a contralto tremolo. “Even when I was little, boys used to yell at me that my father had killed a man—on account of Mama.”