Everard explained to the boy that he could have killed them, and was contented to have sent them to gaol for a few weeks.

Nevil gaped at the empty magnanimity which his uncle presented to him as a remarkably big morsel.
At the age of fourteen he was despatched to sea.
He went unwillingly; not so much from an objection to a naval life as from a wish, incomprehensible to grown men and boys, and especially to his cousin, Cecil Baskelett, that he might remain at school and learn.
'The fellow would like to be a parson!' Everard said in disgust.
No parson had ever been known of in the Romfrey family, or in the Beauchamp.

A legend of a parson that had been a tutor in one of the Romfrey houses, and had talked and sung blandly to a damsel of the blood--degenerate maid--to receive a handsome trouncing for his pains, instead of the holy marriage-tie he aimed at, was the only connection of the Romfreys with the parsonry, as Everard called them.

He attributed the boy's feeling to the influence of his great-aunt Beauchamp, who would, he said, infallibly have made a parson of him.

'I'd rather enlist for a soldier,' Nevil said, and he ceased to dream of rebellion, and of his little property of a few thousand pounds in the funds to aid him in it.