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The White House was bathed in an intensely golden light, and as I walked northwest on the wide avenue, past the tattered rooton Monuantic diamond hatpin

Certainly I was angry that Theodore Roosevelt had used ames And I dreaded even more the moment when I returned home to find my house empty

But still, there was so on the htful smell of woodsmoke on the breeze

I found o, just before he drifted off to sleep

“You did fine, Ben You did just fine”

To have a man like Abraham say that… well, that’s all anyone could ever ask for

“You did fine, Ben You did just fine”

I turned off South Carolina Avenue onto our street Everything looked so fao No one had taken a paintbrush to our peeling little house The second-floor shutters still hung tilted and broken, and the brick as still perilously uneven

As I mounted the front steps, threemy insides into a hard knot

I unlocked the door and stepped into the vestibule All was still

I walked to the bottom of the stairs and stood there a few moments And then—

I heard Alice’s little voice

“I think I heard the front door,” she said

I knelt down to remove two identical boxes wrapped in brown paper from my valise I shucked off the paper and opened them

“Do you think it could be Papa?” Amelia asked