The boys with
digestions hope to write their names large on the Frontier and
struggle for dreary places like Bannu and Kohat. The bilious ones
climb into the Secretariat. Which is very bad for the liver.
Others are bitten with a mania for District work, Ghuznivide coins
or Persian poetry; while some, who come of farmers' stock, find that
the smell of the Earth after the Rains gets into their blood, and
calls them to "develop the resources of the Province." These men
are enthusiasts. Pinecoffin belonged to their class. He knew a
great many facts bearing on the cost of bullocks and temporary
wells, and opium-scrapers, and what happens if you burn too much
rubbish on a field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil. All the
Pinecoffins come of a landholding breed, and so the land only took
back her own again. Unfortunately--most unfortunately for
Pinecoffin--he was a Civilian, as well as a farmer. Nafferton
watched him, and thought about the horse. Nafferton said:--"See me
chase that boy till he drops!" I said:--"You can't get your knife
into an Assistant Commissioner.
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