The people, always the people, thought his daughter. A world full of people, and if he had his way he would free and feed all of them. In the meantime he was dubious about spending the money for a new pair of spectacles, but bent close to his desk peering through an old pair that had one bow mended with black thread stiffened with glue.
“You’d better have a new cushion in that old chair, Papa,” she suggested. “If you sit on that thin one in those wool breeches, they’ll be worn to a shine and show thin spots mighty quickly. I’ll tell one of the women to stitch up a stout canvas cover and stuff it with plenty of feathers.” She moved to the high window and looked off across the hill. “Those mountains look like winter,” she observed. “In spring and summer a blue haze makes them dim and far and restful to look at, but in winter their crests stand out sharp and blue and cold and a bit hostile. I hope you’ve had plenty of wood cut and piled. You’ll need big fires, especially if everyone comes home for Christmas.”
He frowned a little, looked startled. “Christmas?” he repeated. “Is it near—and is it so important?”
She drew back a little. “Of course it’s important! Don’t tell me, Papa, that those people who called you Jefferson the Infidel had any truth to back up their accusations? Don’t tell me that you don’t believe that the Son of God was born on Christmas day and that it is a holy day to be remembered?”
“I am not an infidel,” he said soberly. “I have never denied the existence and the power of God. And I have studied extensively the sayings of Jesus. I have also never discovered in all my reading any proof that he was born on the twenty-fifth of December—especially as the calendar has been changed several times since the period began that men call Anno Domini.”
“It is the day the Church sets apart as a holy day. For me, Papa, and for my children, that’s enough,” said Martha a bit tartly. “Surely there have been times when Christmas was important in your life, though you’ve been at home so little?”
“Oh, yes.” He was quick to try to mollify her. Patsy in an acid mood, he remembered, could be a trifle difficult. “I remember times at Shadwell when my mother was alive. And before my father died there was always some kind of feasting, a goose saved and fattened and a fat pig killed for the Negroes, and mother usually had suckets of some sort for the young ones and opened her best brandied peaches and preserves.”