er the boy's nurse had been a Welsh--or a
Scotch-woman, or in what manner he associated a shield emblazoned with
three ermines with the idea of personal property, but he no sooner beheld
this family emblem than he stoutly determined on vindicating his right to
the splendid vehicle on which it was displayed. The Baronet arrived while
the boy's maid was in vain endeavouring to make him desist from his
determination to appropriate the gilded coach-and-six. The rencontre was
at a happy moment for Edward, as his uncle had been just eyeing
wistfully, with something of a feeling like envy, the chubby boys of the
stout yeoman whose mansion was building by his direction. In the
round-faced rosy cherub before him, bearing his eye and his name, and
vindicating a hereditary title to his family, affection, and patronage,
by means of a tie which Sir Everard held as sacred as either Garter or
Blue-mantle, Providence seemed to have granted to him the very object
best calculated to fill up the void in his hopes and affections. Sir
Everard returned to Waverley-Hall upon a led horse, which was kept in
readiness for him, while the child and his attendant were sent home in
the carriage to Brerewood Lodge, with such a message as opened to Richard
Waverley a door of reconciliation with his elder brother.

Their intercourse, however, though thus renewed, continued to be rather
formal and civil than partaking of brotherly cordiality; yet it was
sufficient to the wishes of both parties. Sir Everard obtained, in the
frequent society of his little nephew, something on which his hereditary
pride might found the anticipated pleasure of a continuation of his
lineage, and where his kind and gentle affections could at the same time
fully exercise themselves. For Richard Waverley, he beheld in the growing
attachment between the uncle and nephew the means of securing his son's,
if not his own, succession to the hereditary estate, which he felt would
be rather endangered than promoted by any attempt on his own part towards
a closer intimacy with a man of Sir Everard's habits and opinions.

Thus, by a sort of tacit compromise, little Edward was permitted to pass
the greater part of the year at the Hall, and appeared to stand in the
same intimate relation to both families, although their mutual
intercourse was otherwise limited to formal messages and more formal
visits. The education of the youth was regulated alternately by the taste
and opinions of his un