“You seem to have such a lot behind you,” she said.

“Do I? It seems to me I’ve died once or twice already. Yet here I am, pegging on, and in for more trouble.”

She was thinking hard, yet listening to the storm.

“And weren’t you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel was dead?”

“No! They were a mingy lot.” He laughed suddenly. “The Colonel used to say: Lad, the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would give them a stoppage. They’re the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented: full of conceit of themselves, frightened even if their bootlaces aren’t correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That’s what finishes me up. Kowtow, kowtow, arse-licking till their tongues are tough: yet they’re always in the right. Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each.”