… I just sat muching jaka*, but I couldn’t help listening to her, being reminded of that old harridan Lady Sale, tapping her mittened fingers while the jezzail bullets whistled round her on the Kabul retreat, and demanding acidly why something was not done about it. Aye. it’s comical in it’s way – and yet, when you’ve seen the mem-sahibs pursing their lips and raising indignant brows in the face of dangers and horrors that set their men-folk shaking, you begin to understand why there’s all that pink on the map. It’s vicerage morality, nursery discipline, and a thorough sense of propriety and sanitation that have done it – and when they’re gone, and the mem-sahibs with them, why, the map won’t be pink any longer.
*dried meat
Flashman's Lady, p.283, Pan edition, 1979.
Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, empire.
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