Whilst other people had been doubting whether it might not "create unpleasantness" to interfere in this case and that, the Colonel had fought each boy's battle, and seen most of them off on their homeward journeys.

He was used to dealing with men, and with emergencies, and it puzzled him when my Uncle Henry consulted his law-books and advised caution, and my father saw his agent on farm business, whilst the fate of one of Crayshaw's victims yet hung in the balance.
When all was over the Colonel left us, and took Lewis with him, and his departure raised curiously mixed feelings of regret and relief.
He had quite won my mother's heart, chiefly by his energy and tenderness for the poor boys, and partly by his kindly courtesy and deference towards her.

Indeed all ladies liked him--all, that is, who knew him.
Before they came under the influence of his pleasantness and politeness, he shared the half-hostile reception to which any person or anything that was foreign to our daily experience was subjected in our neighbourhood.

So that the first time Colonel Jervois appeared in our pew, Mrs.Simpson (the wife of a well-to-do man of business who lived near us) said to my mother after church, "I see you've got one of the military with you," and her tone was more critical than congratulatory.
But when my mother, with unconscious diplomacy, had kept her to luncheon, and the Colonel had handed her to her seat, and had stroked his moustache, and asked in his best manner if she meant to devote her son to the service of his country, Mrs.Simpson undid her bonnet-strings, fairly turned her back on my father, and was quite unconscious when Martha handed the potatoes; and she left us wreathed in smiles, and resolved that Mr.Simpson should buy their son Horace a commission instead of taking him into the business.

Mr.Simpson did not share her views, and I believe he said some rather nasty things about swaggering, and not having one sixpence to rub against another.