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 down hill 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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