By interjecting questions that could not be understood, and commenting on the answers received, he insured perpetual laughter, with the most salutary effects on the over-consideration of any political question, together with a tendency to make his neighbors say: "Ah! Tom Gaunt, he's a proper caution, he is!" An encomium dear to his ears.

What he seriously thought about anything in this world, no one knew; but some suspected him of voting Liberal, because he disturbed their meetings most.

His loyalty to his daughter was not credited to affection.

It was like Tom Gaunt to stick his toes in and kick--the Quality, for choice.
To look at him and old Gaunt, one would not have thought they could be son and father, a relationship indeed ever dubious.

As for his wife, she had been dead twelve years.