While telling it he was kind enough to allow me to put on my trousers.
It was just the sort of thing I might have foreseen.

Peter, left alone, had become first bored and then reckless.

He had persuaded the lieutenant to take him out to supper at a big Berlin restaurant.

There, inspired by the lights and music--novel things for a backveld hunter--and no doubt bored stiff by his company, he had proceeded to get drunk.

That had happened in my experience with Peter about once in every three years, and it always happened for the same reason.