 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 uncle and of his
father. But more of this in a subsequent chapter.
 

                                 Chapter Third.

                                   Education.

The education of our hero, Edward Waverley, was of a nature somewhat desultory.
In infancy, his health suffered, or was supposed to suffer (which is quite the
same thing), by the air of London. As soon, therefore, as official duties,
attendance on Parliament, or the prosecution of any of his plans of interest or
ambition, called his father to town, which was his usual residence for eight
months in the year, Edward was transferred to Waverley-Honour, and experienced a
total change of instructors and of lessons, as well as of residence. This might
have been remedied, had his father placed him under the superintendence of a
permanent tutor. But he considered that one of his choosing would probably have
been unacceptable at Waverley-Honour, and that such a selection as Sir Everard
might have made, were the matter left to him, would have burdened him with a
disagreeable inmate, if not a political spy, in his family
