“I was tall for my age.” He looked at Burton, Van Slyck, and Wheeler to gauge if they esteemed him for what he’d done—tried to do, rather—or if they thought he was a little touched. “It was in May, around a month after war got declared. I’d just graduated from Boston Latin.”

“What? Did you figure graduating from Boston Latin would have impressed Colonel Roosevelt?”—Burton, tauntingly.

Nathaniel shook his head. Wheeler, tapping the bowl of his pipe against his shoe, although it contained no tobacco, gazed at him with thoughtful curiosity.

“Last thing I’d ever want to do is see the elephant, at any age,” he said. “What was the idea?”

“His father,” Will said, answering for him. “Mr. Braithwaite saw the elephant in the Civil War, and the elephant took one of his eyes for seeing it too close.”

“You must mean his grandfather,” Burton said.

“No, my father,” said Nathaniel.

“And you wished to follow in the old man’s footsteps, right, Natters? Be a war hero?”