The prospect of the "whuppin'" did not affect Billy's happiness, who, having much to eat and little to do, and the presence of Rattler and his loved "Marse George," had all that was essential to his happiness.
The life was so altogether new to George, and the companionship of Lord Fairfax so unlike any he had ever known before, that the boy's mind grew and developed more in the weeks he spent at Greenway than in all his previous life. For the first time he was treated as a man by a man, and all at once it made a man of him. He began to think and act like a man instead of a boy.
Lord Fairfax did not join him in his sports and hunting expeditions, but he delighted to hear of them when George would return after a hard day's tramp over the mountains in search of game. Proud was he the day he returned after having shot his first bear—a splendid black specimen, measuring over five feet from snout to tail. Old Lance, who had become a skilful trapper, took the skin off, and cured it so cleverly that not an inch of it was lost. This trophy George intended for his mother.
Every evening he spent in the library with Lord Fairfax, reading. Sometimes it was a book of his own choice, and sometimes he read aloud to the Earl, whose eyes were beginning to fail. Many of the books thus read were classical authors and scientific treatises, neither of which George had any natural fancy for. But he had the capacity to learn something from everything, and the most valuable lesson he got from his varied reading was the vast number of things of which he was ignorant compared with the small number of things he knew. This made him perfectly modest at all times.
As for Lord Fairfax, he felt himself daily growing more passionately fond, in his quiet and restrained way, of the boy. He began to look forward with apprehension to the time when he must again be alone—a feeling he had never had before. He would gladly have kept George with him always, and provided for his future; but he knew well enough that Madam Washington would never give up this noble son of hers to anybody in the world. And so the two lived together, drawing closer and closer to each other, each of a silent, strong nature—the man of the world wearied of courts and camps, and the boy in his white-souled youth knowing nothing but the joy of living and the desire of living rightly, and both were happy in their daily and hourly companionship.