“That’s what I went to see,” he added.
“Don’t believe you ever had a father,” said Vereker.
“I didn’t,” said Gussie Augustus Gus. “I was an orphan. . . . Am still. . . . Poignant. . . . Searching. . . .”
Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji listened to this sort of thing with an owlish expression on his fat face. When anybody laughed he laughed also, loudly and raucously.
It was borne in upon Bertram that it took more than fever, hunger, boredom, mud, rain and misery to depress the spirits of the officers of the garrison of Butindi. . . .
“Khana tyar hai, [168a] Sahib,” announced the Major’s butler, salaaming.
“Come and gnaw ropes and nibble bricks, Greene,” said the officer addressed, and with adieux to Wavell and Forbes, who ran a mess of their own, the guests departed from the Bristol Bar and entered the Officers’ Mess. Here Bertram learnt the twin delights of a native bedstead when used as a seat. You can either sit on the narrow wooden edge until you feel as though you have been sitting on a hot wire for a week, or you can slide back on to the string part and slowly, slowly disappear from sight, and from dinner.
“This water drawn from the river and been standing in the bath all day, boy?”
“Han, [168b] Sahib,” replied that worthy.
“Alum in the water?”