Grand fighters, loyal as steel while properly understood and properly treated--in other words, while properly officered.

(Men, albeit, with deplorably little understanding of, or regard for, Pagett, M.P., and his kind, who yearn to do so much for them.) These men Damocles admired and loved, though even _they_ were apt to be very naughty in the bazaar, to gamble and to toy with opium, bhang, and (alleged) brandy, to dally with houris and hearts'-delights, to use unkind measures towards the good _bunnia_ and _sowkar_ who had lent them monies, and to do things outside the Lines that were not known in the Officers' Mess.
The boy preferred the Rissaldar-Major even to some Sahibs of his acquaintance--that wonderful old man-at-arms, horseman, _shikarri_, athlete, gentleman.

(Yet how strange and sad to see him out of his splendid uniform, in sandals, _dhotie_, untrammelled shirt-tails, dingy old cotton coat and loose _puggri_, undistinguishable from a school-master, clerk, or post-man; so _un_-sahib-like.) And what a fine riding-master he made for an ambitious, fearless boy--though Ochterlonie Sahib said he was too cruel to be a good _horse_-master.
How _could_ people be civilians and live away from regiments?
Live without ever touching swords, lances, carbines, saddles?
What a queer feeling it gave one to see the regiment go past the saluting base on review-days, at the gallop, with lances down.

One wanted to shout, to laugh--to _cry_.

(It made one's mouth twitch and chin work.) Oh, to _lead_ the regiment as Father did--horse and man one welded piece of living mechanism.
Father said you couldn't ride till you had taken a hundred tosses, been pipped a hundred times.