"Many thanks!" Bernard made a grotesque gesture of submission. "What sort of woman is your wife, my son? Do you think she will like me?"
Everard turned and smote him on the shoulder. "Of course she will! She will adore you. All women do."
"Oh, not quite!" protested Bernard modestly. "I'm not tall enough to please everyone of the feminine gender. But you think your wife will overlook that?"
"I know," said Everard, with conviction.
His brother laughed with cheery self-satisfaction. "In that case, of course I shall adore her," he said.
CHAPTER VII
FALSE PRETENCES
They were a merry party at mess that night. General Sir Reginald Bassett was a man of the bluff soldierly order who knew how to command respect from his inferiors while at the same time he set them at their ease. There was no pomp and circumstance about him, yet in the whole of the Indian Empire there was not an officer more highly honoured and few who possessed such wide influence as "old Sir Reggie," as irreverent subalterns fondly called him.