`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 boot−laces aren't correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That's what finishes me up. Kow−tow, kow−tow, arse−licking till their tongues are tough: yet
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