Elspeth, I may tell you, speaks only English—well, Scotch, if you like—and enough nursery French to get her through Customs and bullyrag waiters, but anything the Queen said, however wild, always sent her into transports of approval.
(Chapter 1, p. 11)

I'd vowed never to go near India again after the Afgan fiasco of '42, and might easily have kept my word but for Elspeth's loose conduct. In those salad days, you see, she had to be forever flirting with anything in britches—not that I blame her, for she was a rare beauty, and I was often away, or ploughing with other heifers.
(Chapter 2, p. 20)

"George, I ain't puffing myself, but I'm not unknown over there! Man alive, when we had a garrison in Lahore, in '42, I was being trumpeted all over the shop! Why, you said yourself the fewer who knew Iflassman...