all to your own nose! You 're
talking to me, not to a gallery. Worthy of them! Cæsar wraps his head in his
robe: he gets his dig in the ribs for all his attitudinizing. It 's very well
for a man to talk like that who owns no more than his bare-bodkin life, poor
devil. Tall talk 's his jewelry: he must have his dandification in bunkum. You
ought to know better. Property and titles are worth having, whether you are
worthy of them or a disgrace to your class. The best way of defending them is to
keep a strong fist, and take care you don't draw your fore-foot back more than
enough.«
    »Please propose something to be done,« said Nevil, depressed by the
recommendation of that attitude.
    Everard proposed a fight for every privilege his class possessed. »They
say,« he said, »a nobleman fighting the odds is a sight for the gods: and I
wouldn't yield an inch of ground. It 's no use calling things by fine names -
the country 's ruined by cowardice. Poursuivez! I cry. Haro! at them! The
biggest heart wins in the end. I haven't a doubt about that. And I haven't a
doubt we carry the tonnage.«
    »There 's the people,« sighed Nevil, entangled in his uncle's haziness.
    »What people?«
    »I suppose the people of Great Britain count, sir.«
    »Of course they do; when the battle 's done, the fight lost and won.«
    »Do you expect the people to look on, sir?«
    »The people always wait for the winner, boy Nevil.«
    The young fellow exclaimed despondingly, »If it were a race!«
    »It 's like a race, and we 're confoundedly out of training,« said Everard.
    There he rested. A mediæval gentleman with the docile notions of the twelfth
century, complacently driving them to grass and wattling them in the nineteenth,
could be of no use to a boy trying to think, though he could set the youngster
galloping. Nevil wandered about the woods of Steynham, disinclined to shoot and
lend a hand to country sports. The popping of the guns of his uncle and guests
hung about his ears much like their speech, which was unobjectionable in itself,
but not sufficient; a little hard, he thought, a little idle. He wanted
something, and wanted them to give their time and energy