"They're going to lionize him while he's here, so we'd better move him on." "But where ?" "I've got it! There's a letter in from Everton at Abu, saying he needs a man badly to go to Howrah and act resident there--says he hasn't heard from the missionaries and isn't satisfied--wants a man without too much authority to go there and keep an eye on things in general.

Howrah's a hell of a place from all accounts." "But that 'ud be promotion!" "Can't be helped.

No excuse for reducing him, so far as I've heard.

The trouble is the cub has done too dashed well.

We've got to promote him if we want to be rid of him." They talked it over for an hour, and at the end of it decided Cunningham should go to Howrah, provided a brigadier could be induced without too much argument to see reason.
"The Brigadier probably wants to keep him, and his Colonel will raise all the different kinds of Cain there are!" suggested the man who had begun the discussion.
"I've seen brigadiers before now reduced to a proper sense of their own unimportance!" remarked another man.