“Oh, no doubt; but this is India, and peace time. Not that I’d quarrel with anything that made people more friendly, but when you have to unlearn all you were ever taught——! It’s mad about the men the old lad is. The officers may go hang, but every private is his good comrade. The letters they send him! you’d laugh, I tell you—where you didn’t cry! Well, there y’are now; what d’ye expect these old colonels and brigadiers, who have spent all their lives in India, to think of it?”
“You mean they would not be pleased?”
“Pleased? Sure they hate the General as heartily as he hates them. And he hates the Civilians worse. And if there is anything he hates worse than a Civilian, it’s a Political. So now you see why it’s Old Harry and the rank and file against the Services and all the old Indians everywhere.”
“Ah, if he hates the Politicals—I heard him catch up Ambrose in the horridest way—— But how can he——”
“Oh, he don’t mean it a bit. If you sit mum and let him rage over your head, he’ll be smiling sweetly on you in another five minutes. But if you give it him back—my word, won’t he kick up a dust! And if you bear malice, so can he—for ever and ever. He’s the drollest old chap—like a child in some ways. You tip Ambrose the wink not to answer him back, and not to use Persian words in speaking or writing to him—he boasts he don’t understand a syllable of anything but plain English—and they’ll get on like a house afire.”
“But, Brian, he ain’t accustomed——”
“My dear creature, he’s got to get accustomed—or be broke. I do hope he and Bayard and all the fellows here ain’t going to get their noses in the air. If they do, the General will rub ’em tidily in the dust for ’em, and enjoy doing it. But if they’ll just take a little pains to keep on his soft side—and no man has a softer—we’ll all be the happiest family in the world.”
“You will have found the soft side, then?”
“With intervals, my dear creature—with intervals. Explosions, let us say, which take you by surprise all the more because you have been getting on so uncommon well the moment before. But I’m the lucky chap; only once have I been regularly blown sky-high—and that was your fault.”
“It’s trying to tease me y’are, you rude boy.”