“I do not know what we are to do with that boy Billy,” she said. “This morning, when he ought to have been picking up chips for the kitchen, he was lying in front of your fireplace with Rattler, both of them sound asleep.”
George, instead of being scandalized at this, only smiled a little.
“I do not know which is the most useless,” exclaimed Madam Washington, with energy, “the dog or that boy!”
George ceased smiling at this; he did not like to have Billy too severely commented on, and deftly turned the conversation. “Lord Fairfax again asked me, when we were crossing the river last night, to visit him at Greenway Court. I should like very much to go, mother. I believe I would rather go even than to spend Christmas at Mount Vernon, for I have been to Mount Vernon, but I have never been to Greenway, or to any place like it.”
“The earl sent me a letter this morning on the subject before he left Fredericksburg,” replied Madam Washington, quietly.
The blood flew into George’s face, but he spoke no word. His mother was a person who did not like to be questioned.
“You may read it,” she continued, handing it to him out of her bag.
It was sealed with the huge crest of the Fairfaxes, and was written in the beautiful penmanship of the period. It began:
“Honored Madam.—The promise you graciously made me, that your eldest son, Mr. George Washington, might visit me at Greenway Court, gave me both pride and pleasure; and will you not add to that pride and pleasure by permitting him to return with me when I pass through Fredericksburg again on my way home two days hence? Do not, honored madam, think that I am proposing that your son spend his whole time with me in sport and pleasure. While both have their place in the education of the young, I conceive, honored madam, that your son has more serious business in hand—namely, the improvement of his mind, and the acquiring of those noble qualities and graces which distinguish the gentleman from the lout.
“He would have at Greenway, at least, the advantage of the best minds in England as far as they can be writ in books, and for myself, honored madam, I will be as kind to him as the tenderest father. If you can recall with any pleasure the days so long ago, when we were both twenty years younger, and when your friendship, honored madam, was the chief pleasure, as it always will be the chief honor, of my life, I beg that you will not refuse my request. I am, madam, with sentiments of the highest esteem,