“Knocked him sprawling, sir, in my brother’s house. My brother was very much offended with me, and I was ashamed of myself.”
“But you are good friends now?”
“Better than ever, sir, for William behaved as well as I behaved ill, and if he is willing to come with me I shall be glad to have him.”
“I shall send an express, then, to Belvoir, and William will be here in a few days. And now I have something else to propose to you. My man Lance is very anxious to see the new country, although he has not directly asked my permission to go; but the poor fellow has served me so faithfully that I feel like indulging him. Only a lettered man, my dear George, can stand with cheerfulness this solitude month after month and year after year as I do, and, although Lance is a man of great natural intelligence, he never read a book through in his life, so that his time is often heavy on his hands. I think a few months of mountaineering would be a godsend to him in big lonely life up here, and I make no doubt at all that you would be glad to have him with you.”
“Glad, sir! I would be more glad than I can say. But what is to become of you without Lance?”
“I can get on tolerably well without him for a time,” replied the earl, smiling. And the unspoken thought in his mind was, “And I shall feel sure that there is a watchful and responsible person in company with the two youngsters I shall send out.”
“And Billy, of course, will go with me,” said George, meditatively. “Why, my lord, it will be a pleasure jaunt.”
“Get all the happiness you can out of it, George; I have no fear that you will neglect your work.”
Within two weeks from that day William Fairfax had arrived, and the party was ready to start. It was then the first of April, and not much field-work could be done until May. But Lord Fairfax found it impossible to hold in his young protégés. As for Lance, he was the most eager of the lot to get away. Cut off from association with his own class, nothing but his devotion to Lord Fairfax made the isolated life at Greenway Court endurable to him; and this prospect of variety in his routine, where, to a certain degree, he could resume his campaigning habits, was a fascinating change to him.
The earl, with a smile, and a sigh at the loss of George and William’s cheerful company and Lance’s faithful attendance, saw them set forth at sunrise on an April morning. George, mounted on the new half-bred horse that Lord Fairfax had given him, rode side by side with William Fairfax, who was equally well mounted. He carried the most precious of his surveying instruments and two little books, closely printed, which the earl had given him the night before. One was a miniature copy of Shakespeare’s plays, and the other a small volume of Addison’s works.