Another friend, a young officer whose personal extravagance was a proverb even at a station in India, boasted for a week of having sold a rickety knick-knack shelf to a man who was going off to the hills for five-and-twenty rupees when it was not worth six.

I have heard him swear at tailors, servants, and subordinates of all kinds, for cheating.

I do not think it ever dawned upon his mind that common honesty was a virtue in which he himself was wanting.

As to Mrs.
Minchin's tales on this subject--but Mrs.Minchin's tales were not to be relied upon.
It was about this time that Mrs.Minchin and the bride quarrelled.

In a few weeks after her arrival, the bride knew all the ladies of the regiment and the society of the station, and then showed little inclination to be bear-led by Mrs.Minchin.She met that terrible lady so smartly on one occasion that she retired, worsted, for the afternoon, and the bride drove triumphantly round the place, and called on all her friends, looking as soft as a Chinchilla muff, and dropping at every bungalow the tale of something that Mrs.Minchin had said, by no means to the advantage of the inmates.
It was in this way that Aunt Theresa came to know what Mrs.Minchin had said about her wearing half-mourning for my father and mother.