‘Now,’ said Everard, ’we shall see what staff there is in that fellow Nevil.’

He expected, as you may imagine, a true young Beauchamp-Romfrey to be straining his collar like a leash-hound.

CHAPTER IV

A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION

The young gentleman to whom Everard Romfrey transferred his combative spirit despatched a letter from the Dardanelles, requesting his uncle not to ask him for a spark of enthusiasm.  He despised our Moslem allies, he said, and thought with pity of the miserable herds of men in regiments marching across the steppes at the bidding of a despot that we were helping to popularize.  He certainly wrote in the tone of a jejune politician; pardonable stuff to seniors entertaining similar opinions, but most exasperating when it runs counter to them:  though one question put by Nevil was not easily answerable.  He wished to know whether the English people would be so anxious to be at it if their man stood on the opposite shore and talked of trying conclusions on their green fields.  And he suggested that they had become so ready for war because of their having grown rather ashamed of themselves, and for the special reason that they could have it at a distance.

‘The rascal’s liver’s out of order,’ Everard said.

Coming to the sentence:  ’Who speaks out in this crisis?  There is one, and I am with him’; Mr. Romfrey’s compassionate sentiments veered round to irate amazement.  For the person alluded to was indeed the infamous miauling cotton-spinner.  Nevil admired him.  He said so bluntly.  He pointed to that traitorous George-Foxite as the one heroical Englishman of his day, declaring that he felt bound in honour to make known his admiration for the man; and he hoped his uncle would excuse him.  ’If we differ, I am sorry, sir; but I should be a coward to withhold what I think of him when he has all England against him, and he is in the right, as England will discover.  I maintain he speaks wisely—­I don’t mind saying, like a prophet; and he speaks on behalf of the poor as well as of the country.  He appears to me the only public man who looks to the state of the poor—­I mean, their interests.  They pay for war, and if we are to have peace at home and strength for a really national war, the only war we can ever call necessary, the poor must be contented.  He sees that.  I shall not run the risk of angering you by writing to defend him, unless I hear of his being shamefully mishandled, and the bearer of an old name can be of service to him.  I cannot say less, and will say no more.’

Everard apostrophized his absent nephew:  ‘You jackass!’