Mr. Jack Eppes had come riding up from Eppington, bringing a haunch of venison that he had hung for days to tender it, and now it was turning slowly on a great iron spit, with a half-grown Negro boy sitting by with a mop of clean lint to dip into melted fat and wine vinegar whenever the meat needed basting. For days the service yard had been full of squawkings and drifting feathers as the women killed and dressed turkeys and geese. A fat ham simmered, and plump plum puddings boiled and bubbled, with sauce being beaten up in earthen bowls.
“This here now,” stated Burwell, pompously, “is going to be a sure-enough Christmas.”
All the fine china had been taken down from the cupboards and washed, and every wineglass on the place rubbed to a shine. Burwell himself had polished the silver, not trusting any other servant to that special task because Mister Tom wanted things right when he took a fancy notion. Right now he had the notion and had it through and through.
Cayce, the new young body servant Burwell was training, was pressing his master’s new wool pantaloons and the old Negro stood by, supervising and grumbling.
“Old times in Washington,” he declared, “Mister Tom wouldn’t be seen in old plain long-leg breeches like them there. Up there we got him up all dandified in white satin knee breeches and long silk stockings and a swingy-tail coat. Ruffles all starched.—Boy, did he strut! ‘Mister President!’ everybody say, and bow, and some ladies scrooch way down till they petticoats lay all out on the floor. Won’t see no more times like that. But anyhow, we puttin’ the big pot in the little one, this Christmas.”
“He got Dely ironing a ruffled shirt right now,” insisted Cayce, “but he say he ain’t wearin’ no buckle shoes. They hurt his feet. Dunno how I git them old slippers off’n him, but Miss Patsy say I got it to do.”
The young Randolphs and Carrs and Francis Eppes, all red-cheeked and excited, were running in and out of the house, lugging in branches of cedar and pine and holly, scattering needles and berries and trash over the shining floors so that two women had to follow around with brooms and mops to shine up to suit Miss Patsy. But in the library, where a great fire burned under the mirrored mantel and bookshelves mounted to the ceiling on every wall, Thomas Jefferson sat in his revolving chair and looked long into the gold and scarlet leap of the flames.
