The governor showed them great courtesy.  He liked them and his penetrating Scotch mind told him that they had quality.  Despite his hunter’s dress, which he had resumed, Willet’s manners were those of the great world, and Dinwiddie often looked at him with curiosity.  Robert seemed to him to be wrapped in the same veil of mystery, and he judged that the lad, whose manners were not inferior to those of Willet, had in him the making of a personage.  As for Tayoga, Dinwiddie had been too long in America and he knew too much of the Hodenosaunee not to appreciate his great position.  An insult or a slight in Virginia to the coming young chief of the Clan of the Bear, of the nation Onondaga would soon be known in the far land of the Six Nations, and its cost would be so great that none might count it.  Just as tall oaks from little acorns grow, so a personal affront may sow the seed of a great war or break a great alliance, and Dinwiddie knew it.

The governor, assisted by his wife and two daughters, entertained at his house, and Robert, Tayoga, Willet, and Grosvenor, arrayed in their best, attended, forming conspicuous figures in a great crowd, as the Virginia gentry, also clad in their finest, attended.  Robert, with his adaptable and imaginative mind, was at home at once among them.  He liked the soft southern speech, the grace of manner and the good feeling that obtained.  They were even more closely related than the great families of New York, and it was obvious that they formed a cultivated society, in close touch with the mother country, intensely British in manner and mode of thought, and devoted in both theory and practice to personal independence.

As the spring was now well advanced the night was warm and the windows and doors of the Governor’s Palace were left open.  Negroes in livery played violins and harps while all the guests who wished danced.  Others played cards in smaller rooms, but there was no such betting as Robert had seen at Bigot’s ball in Quebec.  There was some drinking of claret and punch, but no intoxication.  The general note was of great gayety, but with proper restraints.

Robert noticed that the men, spending their lives in the open air and having abundant and wholesome food, were invariably tall and big of bone.  The women looked strong and their complexions were rosy.  The same facility of mind that had made him like New York and Quebec, such contrasting places, made him like Williamsburg too, which was different from either.

Quickly at home, in this society as elsewhere, the hours were all too short for him.  Both he and Grosvenor, who was also adaptable, seeing good in everything, plunged deep into the festivities.  He danced with young women and with old, and Willet more than once gave him an approving glance.  It seemed that the hunter always wished him to fit himself into any group with which he might be cast, and to make himself popular, and to do so Robert’s temperament needed little encouragement.