He held the promise of the Chief for
active service, and the men must get ready.
Their horses, as well as themselves, had recovered from past famine and fatigue, and were again fit for
active service; and an impatience began to manifest itself among the men once more to take the field, and set off on some wandering expedition.
"That's all very well, you know," he reminded him quietly, "but you won't be fit enough for
active service for some time to come."
He wandered about the world for a few months longer, trying to forget his grief, then came back to the court, at London, and sought some commission in
active service. But unluckily, Richard was gone again upon his adventures, and Prince John, who acted as Regent, had never been fond of Robin.
"But," he said, "Mouston is not so young as he was, my dear fellow; besides, he has grown fat and perhaps has lost his fitness for
active service."
Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops, after their
active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all sorts of tempting wares.
A large and still increasing family, an husband disabled for
active service, but not the less equal to company and good liquor, and a very small income to supply their wants, made her eager to regain the friends she had so carelessly sacrificed; and she addressed Lady Bertram in a letter which spoke so much contrition and despondence, such a superfluity of children, and such a want of almost everything else, as could not but dispose them all to a reconciliation.
Soldiers, in
active service, are not at all better off: and even in the quieter professions, there is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the body, which seldom leaves a man's looks to the natural effect of time.
I should have started at once, but my companion had been in
active service and he knew better than that.
He went out to India to see whether they were equally strict there, and to try a little
active service. In the matter of bravery (to give him his due), he was a mixture of bull-dog and game-cock, with a dash of the savage.
Indeed, the worthy gentleman, stimulated perhaps by the immediate prospect of being on
active service, was in great spirits and good humour; in proof whereof, it may be here remarked, that he humourously drank all the beer at a draught, and did not utter, on a rough calculation, more than four-score oaths during the whole progress of the meal.
Even when I took command, she was fit only for the junk pile; but the world-old parsimony of government retained her in
active service, and sent two hundred men to sea in her, with myself, a mere boy, in command of her, to patrol thirty from Iceland to the Azores.