His uncle's table roared at his enumeration of the sickly little beings, consumptive or bandy-legged, within a radius of five miles of Steynham.

Action was what he wanted, Everard said.

Nevil perhaps thought the same, for he dashed out of his mooning with a wave of the Tory standard, delighting the ladies, though in that conflict of the Lion and the Unicorn (which was a Tory song) he seemed rather to wish to goad the dear lion than crush the one-horned intrusive upstart.

His calling on the crack corps of Peers to enrol themselves forthwith in the front ranks, and to anticipate opposition by initiating measures, and so cut out that funny old crazy old galleon, the People, from under the batteries of the enemy, highly amused the gentlemen.
Before rejoining his ship, Nevil paid his customary short visit of ceremony to his great-aunt Beauchamp--a venerable lady past eighty, hitherto divided from him in sympathy by her dislike of his uncle Everard, who had once been his living hero.

That was when he was in frocks, and still the tenacious fellow could not bear to hear his uncle spoken ill of.
'All the men of that family are heartless, and he is a man of wood, my dear, and a bad man,' the old lady said.