"I'll tell him that, Your Excellency." Nicolay sounded bitter. He was a young man-he could hardly have had more than thirty years-and had not yet learned altogether to subsume his own feelings in the needs of diplomacy. "When you get right down to it, though, what difference does that make?"

When you got right down to it {American idiom, Lord Lyons thought), it made very little difference. He was silent as he followed Nicolay upstairs. But for the personal secretary and the one servant, he had seen no one in the White House. It was as if the rest of the staff at the presidential mansion feared he bore some deadly, contagious disease. And so, in a way, he did.

John Nicolay seated him in an antechamber outside Lincoln 's office. "Let me announce you, Your Excellency. I'll be back directly." He ducked into the office, closing the door after himself; Lord Lyons hoped he was delivering the personal message with which he had been entrusted. He emerged almost as quickly as he had promised. "President Lincoln will see you now, sir."

"Thank you, Mr. Nicolay," Lord Lyons repeated, striding past the secretary into the office of the president of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln got up from behind his desk and extended his hand. "Good day to you, sir," he said in his rustic accent. Outwardly, he was as calm as if he reckoned the occasion no more than an ordinary social call.

"Good day, Mr. President," Lord Lyons replied, clasping Lincoln 's big hand in his. The American chief executive was so tall and lean and angular that, merely by existing, he reminded Lord Lyons of how short, pudgy, and round-faced he was.

"Sit yourself down, Your Excellency." Lincoln pointed to a chair uphol stered in blue plush. "I know what you're here for. Let's get on with it, shall we? It's like going to the dentist-waiting won't make it any better."