They belonged to Bengal and to Burma, to Madras and to the Punjab, but they were all my people.

I could pick out a score that I knew in fact, and there were none that in imagination I didn't know.

The look of wider seas and skies, the casual experienced glance, the touch of irony and of tolerance, how well I knew it and how well I liked it! Dear old England, sitting in our wake, seemed to hold by comparison a great many soft, unsophisticated people, immensely occupied about very particular trifles.

How difficult it had been, all the summer, to be interested! These of my long acquaintance belonged to my country's Executive, acute, alert, with the marks of travail on them.
Gladly I went in and out of the women's cabins and listened to the argot of the men; my own ruling, administering, soldiering little lot.
Cecily looked at them askance.

To her the atmosphere was alien, and I perceived that gently and privately she registered objections.