"What a pity, Otto, that you had to leave India!"
"Oh, bah, Granny, what a country! It's all very well for you to talk: you know India as the wife of a resident and as the wife of the governor-general. But for young people, starting life...."
"Papa would have helped you, you know...."
"A lot of help Papa could have given!... A beastly country; a dirty, wretched country!"
"But, Otto, I thought it delightful."
"No doubt, in your palace at Buitenzorg. That goes without saying. But were you ever clerk to the magistrates at Rankas-Betoeng?"
"No."
"No, of course not. And that with a wife who topples over like a ninepin, twice a week, with the heat, flat on the floor!"
"Otto!"
"Oh, come, Grandmamma! It's the most confounded, beastly, filthy country I ever was in. We had much better sell those colonies to England; she'll only take them from us, one day, if we don't."