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When the lads returned home at the end of ten delightful months, their mother was surprised at their growth and improvement. George especially was so grown as to come up to his younger-born brother. The boys could hardly be distinguished one from another, especially when their hair was powdered; but that ceremony being too cumbrous for country-life, each of the lads commonly wore his own hair, George his raven black, and Harry his light locks, tied with a ribbon.

Now Mrs. Mountain had a great turn for match-making, and fancied that everybody had a design to marry everybody else. As a consequence of this weakness she was able to persuade George Warrington that Mr. Washington was laying siege to Madame Esmond’s heart, which idea was anything but agreeable to George’s jealous disposition.

“I beg you to keep this quiet, Mountain,” said George, with great dignity. “Or you and I shall quarrel, too. Never to any one must you mention such an absurd suspicion.”

“Absurd! Why absurd? Mr. Washington is constantly with the widow. She never tires of pointing out his virtues as an example to her sons. She consults him on every question respecting her estate and its management. There is 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! The day will come when he won’t go away!” groaned Mrs. Mountain, and in consequence of the suspicions which her words aroused in him Mr. George adopted toward 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; while George, retreating to his tents, read mathematics and French and Latin, or sulked in his book-room.

Harry was away from home with some other sporting friends when Mr. Washington 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 into 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 British provinces were desirous of stopping their incursions, or at any rate to protest against their invasion.

We chose to hold our American colonies by a law that was at least convenient for its framers. The maxim was, that whoever possessed the coast had a right to all the territory in hand as far as the Pacific; so that the British charters only laid down the limits of the colonies from north to south, leaving them quite free from east to west. The French, meanwhile, had their colonies to the north and south, and aimed at connecting them by the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, and the great intermediate lakes and waters lying to the westward of the British possessions. In the year 1748, though peace was signed between the two European kingdoms, the colonial question remained unsettled, to be opened again when either party should be strong enough to urge it. In the year 1753 it came to an issue on the Ohio River where the British and French settlers met.

A company called the Ohio Company, having grants from the Virginia government of lands along that river, found themselves invaded in their settlement’s by French military detachments, who roughly ejected the Britons from their holdings. These latter applied for protection to Mr. Dinwiddie, lieutenant governor of Virginia, who determined upon sending an ambassador to the French commanding officer on the Ohio demanding that the French should desist from their inroads upon the territories of his Majesty King George.