“It’s Ralph!” Rachel hurried forward to greet the young artist, Ralph Earl. Off and on, for many years, the portrait painter had made his home at the Hermitage. He had done a fine portrait of the General, wooed and won Jane Caffrey, Rachel’s niece. There had been a fine wedding in the old log house that still stood there in the yard, but gentle Jane had lived only a year. Now Earl was a saddened and lonely man and Rachel mothered him after her habit with all young, unmothered creatures. “How fine that you got back from the East for Christmas, Ralph!” she cried, taking his hand. “I came to paint your picture,” he said. “The General will never give me any peace till I do your portrait, aunt Rachel.” “Fiddlesticks!” She led him into the house. “You come get warm and dry this minute before you take a ptisic. I’ll make a hot toddy for you, myself. And you don’t want to paint a picture of a fat old woman like me. Nobody would look at it. We’d have to hang it in the wash-house.” “A portrait of you might be hung on the walls of some very splendid place, aunt Rachel,” Earl argued, handing his damp garments to a servant. She looked at him in sudden alarm. “Now whatever do you mean by that?” “Oh—just an idea I had,” he soothed, seeing her perturbation. “People keep getting notions about what Andrew Jackson could do for this country. I hear about them—traveling around.” She clutched at his arm. “No, Ralph—whatever their notions are, he’s not going to go dashing off again on some wild adventure or other. He’s not strong, you know that. He’ll get that lung fever again and it almost caused his death last winter. And besides,”—her eyes misted and her voice croaked—“he’d have to leave our home! Our Hermitage!” “But think of what great things could happen to you, aunt Rachel! Someday you might be one of the greatest ladies in the land.” “I don’t want to be a great lady.” She held tight to the cold hand he had laid upon her cheek. “I want to stay here and raise young Andy and Andrew Hutchings. I want to see Emily well married and all our people taken care of. I never want to have to go dragging out again to make calls and leave cards and smile till my face aches. I have had enough of that.” “Just the same I’m going to paint your portrait,” he insisted. “You paint Emily. She’s filling out, she’s going to be a beauty. The General’s got that little picture of me that Anna Peale painted the year of that New Orleans battle. He carries it around with him all the time, though he wrote to me once and said he didn’t need it, that he had my picture engraved on his heart. Nobody could ask for anything more beautiful than that, Ralph, no woman alive. He wouldn’t engrave a picture of me as I am now, on his heart—an old lady getting fat and out of breath!” “I think he would,” said Earl. “I think he would prize any picture of you, aunt Rachel, more than his life.”