'
'Well, brother, since you betray my secrets, you cannot expect me to
keep yours.--I assure you, Captain Waverley, that Fergus is too proud
to exchange his broadsword for a marechal's baton; that he esteems
Mac-Murrough a far greater poet than Homer, and would not give up his
goat skin purse for all the louis d'or which it could contain.'
'Well pronounced, Flora; blow for blow, as Conan [See Note 19.] said to
the devil. Now do you two talk of bards and poetry, if not of purses and
claymores, while I return to do the final honours to the senators of the
tribe of Ivor.' So saying, he left the room.
The conversation continued between Flora, and Waverley; for two
well-dressed young women, whose character seemed to hover between that
of companions and dependants, took no share in it. They were both
pretty girls, but served only as foils to the grace and beauty of their
patroness. The discourse followed the turn which the Chieftain had given
it, and Waverley was equally amused and surprised with the account which
the lady gave him of Celtic poetry.
'The recitation,' she said, 'of poems, recording the feats of heroes,
the complaints of lovers, and the wars of contending tribes, forms the
chief amusement of a winter fireside in the Highlands.
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