For instance, you may challenge a man
for treading on your corn in a crowd, or for pushing you up to the wall,
or for taking your seat in the theatre; but the modern code of honour
will not permit you to found a quarrel upon your right of compelling a
man to continue addresses to a female relative, which the fair lady has
already refused. So that Fergus was compelled to stomach this supposed
affront, until the whirligig of time, whose motion he promised himself
he would watch most sedulously, should bring about an opportunity of
revenge.
Waverley's servant always led a saddle-horse for him in the rear of the
battalion to which he was attached, though his master seldom rode. But
now, incensed at the domineering and unreasonable conduct of his late
friend, he fell behind the column, and mounted his horse, resolving to
seek the Baron of Bradwardine, and request permission to volunteer in
his troop, instead of the Mac-Ivor regiment.
'A happy time of it I should have had,' thought he, after he was
mounted, 'to have been so closely allied to this superb specimen of
pride and self-opinion and passion. A colonel! why, he should have been
a generalissimo.
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