The boyish spirit kept alive in Sir George, and in that respect he had a surpassing encounter.  He spent holiday hours in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, near which he resided after leaving St. James’s.  There was hardly an animal, or bird, that he could not instruct you upon; but his delight was to watch the streams of happy visitors.  As he sat thus of an afternoon, half a dozen boys gathered round a specimen from animal-land placed near by.

Boys have few doubts, but these lads had theirs as to the identity of the beast.  They noticed Sir George, and a delegate approached him with the request, ‘Please, sir, can you tell us the name of this creature?’ He turned in the direction indicated, and found, strangely enough, that the specimen was one which he had sent home from the far south, during his naturalist’s work there.  He named it, and the lad followed up, ’Where did it come from?’; getting the answer.

Next, ‘Who killed it?’ A pucker gathered upon Sir George’s face, and he hesitated, arguing with himself, ’If I tell them, they’ll think me an impostor, and even discount the information I have given them.’

But the inquisitor waited, and Sir George could do no better than ‘Frankly, you know, I believe I killed it myself.’

‘Here, you fellows!’ the merry voice rang out; ’he says he killed the beast!  Did you ever?’

The other boys left the animal to stare at what they felt to be a greater curiosity.

‘Oh, yes,’ Sir George addressed them, as they formed a half-circle before him, ’what I have told you is quite true.  But if you will listen, I’ll relate the whole story, and then you can decide for yourselves.’

He began the tale, the amused incredulity of the boys quickly vanished, and he never had a more attentive audience.  When he had finished, his auditors raised their hats and caps with a hearty and convinced ’Thank you, sir.’

He gravely saluted them, as was his custom towards young and old, high and low, and then he fell a-dreaming.  He was out walking in the pleasant English woods with Whately, learning from him the manner in which the ancient Britons lived, and how they dug for pig-nuts; or Whately rubbed dry sticks against each other, the primeval manner of making fire.  More, he concentrated, with a glass, the rays of the sun upon a handful of dry twigs, which at the bidding went ablaze.  Still another picture!

’While I was at Cheltenham, Whately was courting a connexion of mine, who later became his wife.  She put me through my tasks, and Whately would help her in that, I sitting between them.  Did ever a boy at his lessons occupy a seat of such influence?  I suppose I could have commanded my own terms in reference to them, and perhaps I did.  They were most pleasant for all concerned.  My education altogether, as a boy, was not very systematic, but it was broad and useful.’

Finally to Sandhurst, where Sir George did so well that the authorities had quite a special word for him; and where one of the teachers, a Scotsman, gave him Bacon to read.