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.
But before entering upon a subject of proverbial delay, I must remind my
reader of the progress of a stone rolled downhill by an idle truant boy
(a pastime at which I was myself expert in my more juvenile years), it
moves at first slowly, avoiding by inflection every obstacle of the least
importance; but when it has attained its full impulse, and draws near the
conclusion of its career, it smokes and thunders down, taking a rood at
every spring, clearing hedge and ditch like a Yorkshire huntsman, and
becoming most furiously rapid in its course when it is nearest to being
consigned to rest for ever.
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