Waverley; or, 'Tis sixty years since — Volume 2Scott, Walter
History
Waverley; or, 'Tis sixty years since — Volume 2
Scott, Walter
Historical fiction; Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746 -- Fiction; Scotland -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction
The appearance of Waverley, embrowned by exercise and dignified by
the habits of military discipline, had acquired an athletic and
hardy character, which not only verified the Colonel's narration,
but surprised and delighted all the inhabitants of Waverley-
Honour. They crowded to see, to hear him, and to sing his praises.
Mr. Pembroke, who secretly extolled his spirit and courage in
embracing the genuine cause of the Church of England, censured his
pupil gently, nevertheless, for being so careless of his
manuscripts, which indeed, he said, had occasioned him some
personal inconvenience, as, upon the Baronet's being arrested by a
king's messenger, he had deemed it prudent to retire to a
concealment called 'The Priest's Hole,' from the use it had been
put to in former days; where, he assured our hero, the butler had
thought it safe to venture with food only once in the day, so that
he had been repeatedly compelled to dine upon victuals either
absolutely cold or, what was worse, only half warm, not to mention
that sometimes his bed had not been arranged for two days
together. Waverley's mind involuntarily turned to the Patmos of
the Baron of Bradwardine, who was well pleased with Janet's fare
and a few bunches of straw stowed in a cleft in the front of a
sand-cliff; but he made no remarks upon a contrast which could
only mortify his worthy tutor.
All was now in a bustle to prepare for the nuptials of Edward, an
event to which the good old Baronet and Mrs. Rachel looked forward
as if to the renewal of their own youth. The match, as Colonel
Talbot had intimated, had seemed to them in the highest degree
eligible, having every recommendation but wealth, of which they
themselves had more than enough. Mr. Clippurse was therefore
summoned to Waverley-Honour, under better auspices than at the
commencement of our story. But Mr. Clippurse came not alone; for,
being now stricken in years, he had associated with him a nephew,
a younger vulture (as our English Juvenal, who tells the tale of
Swallow the attorney, might have called him), and they now carried
on business as Messrs. Clippurse and Hookem. These worthy
gentlemen had directions to make the necessary settlements on the
most splendid scale of liberality, as if Edward were to wed a
peeress in her own right, with her paternal estate tacked to the
fringe of her ermine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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