Georgia had a talent for drawing, and Richmond, who was quite an artist, undertook to teach her, and those lessons did more than anything else to put them on a sociable footing. Richmond liked to give his lessons out under the trees, where his pupil might sketch from nature, and Georgia rather liked it herself, too. It was very pleasant, those lessons; Georgia liked to hear about great cities, about this rush, and roar, and turmoil, and constant flow of busy life, and Richmond had the power of description in a high degree, and used to watch, with a sly, repressed smile, pencil and crayon drop from her fingers, and her eyes fix themselves in eager, unconscious interest on his face, as she grew absorbed in his narrative.
Dangerous work it was, with a pupil and master young and handsome, the romantic sea-shore and murmuring old trees for their school-room, and talking not forbidden either. How Miss Jerusha chuckled over it in confidence to Betsey Periwinkle—she didn't dare to trust Fly—and indulged in sundry wild visions of a brand-new brown silk dress and straw bonnet suitable for the giving away a bride in.
Little did Georgia dream of these extravagant peeps into futurity, or the lessons would have ended then and there, this new-fledged intimacy been unceremoniously nipped in the bud, and Miss Jerusha's castles in Spain tumbled to the ground with a crash! But Georgia was in a dream and said nothing. Richmond did, and laughed quietly over it in the shadow of the old ancestral mansion.
"Yes, this is pleasant," said Richmond, one morning, as he lay idly on the grass, and Georgia sat on the trunk of a fallen tree near, taking her drawing lesson.
She lifted her head and laughed.
"What is pleasant?" she said.
"This—this feeling of rest, of peace, of indolence, of idleness. I never sympathized with Charley's love for the dolce far niente before, but I begin to appreciate it now. One tires of this hurrying, bustling, jostling, uproarious life in the city, and then laziness in the country is considered the greatest of earthly boons. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, you know."
"And do you really like the country better than the city?" asked Georgia.
"I like it—yes—in slices. I shouldn't fancy being buried in the woods among catamounts, and panthers, and settlers hardly less savage. I shouldn't fancy sleeping in wigwams and huts, and living on bear's flesh and Johnny-cake; but I like this. I like to lie under the trees, away out of sight and hearing of the city, yet knowing three or four hours in the cars will bring me to it whenever I feel like going back. I like the feeling of languid repose these still, voiceless, midsummer noondays inspire; I like to have nothing to do; and plenty of time to do it in."
"What an epicure you are," said Georgia, smiling; "now it seems to me after witnessing the ever-changing, ever-restless life in Washington and New York, and all those other great cities, you would find our sober little humdrum Burnfield insupportably dull. I know I should; I would like above all things to live in a great city, life seems to be so fully waked up, so earnest there. I shall, too, some day," she said, in her calm, decided way, as she took up another pencil and went on quietly drawing.