s mother's boy. "She likes
him best, and I like you best, George," cries Mountain. "Besides, if I
were to speak to him, he would tell your mother in a minute. Poor Harry
can keep nothing quiet, and then there would be a pretty quarrel between
Madam and me!"

"I beg you to keep this quiet, Mountain," said Mr. George, with great
dignity, "or you and I shall quarrel too. Neither to me nor to any one
else in the world must you mention such an absurd suspicion."

Absurd! Why absurd? Mr. Washington was constantly with the widow. His
name was forever in her mouth. She was never tired of pointing out his
virtues and examples to her sons. She consulted him on every question
respecting her estate and its management. She never bought a horse
or sold a barrel of tobacco without his opinion. There was a room at
Castlewood regularly called Mr. Washington's room. "He actually leaves
his clothes here and his portmanteau when he goes away. Ah! George,
George! One day will come when he won't go away," groaned Mountain, who,
of course, always returned to the subject of which she was forbidden
to speak. Meanwhile Mr. George adopted towards his mother's favourite a
frigid courtesy, at which the honest gentleman chafed but did not care
to remonstrate, or a stinging sarcasm, which he would break through as
he would burst through so many brambles on those hunting excursions
in which he and Harry Warrington rode so constantly together; whilst
George, retreating to his tents, read mathematics, and French, and
Latin, and sulked in his book-room more and more lonely.

Harry was away from home with some other sporting friends (it is to be
feared the young gentleman's acquaintances were not all as eligible as
Mr. Washington), when the latter came to pay a visit at Castlewood. He
was so peculiarly tender and kind to the mistress there, and received by
her with such special cordiality, that George Warrington's jealousy had
well-nigh broken out in open rupture. But the visit was one of adieu, as
it appeared.

Major Washington was going on a long and dangerous journey, quite to the
western Virginia frontier and beyond it. The French had been for some
time past making inroads into our territory. The government at home,
as well as those of Virginia and Pennsylvania, were alarmed at this
aggressive spirit of the Lords of Canada and Louisiana. Some of our
settlers had already been driven from their holdings by Frenchmen in
arms, and the governors of the