It's like living in a dak-bungalow." The Colonel halted and pulled at his moustache.

He had made a discovery.
He had reflected not without result.

"By George!" he said, "that's right.

Let me put it properly now, as a fellow would put it in a book, if he hit upon anything as good." He framed his aphorism in different phrases before he was satisfied with it.

Then he delivered himself of it with pride.
"At the bottom of the Englishman's conception of life in India, there is always the idea of a dak-bungalow," and he repeated the sentence to commit it surely to memory.