"Knight-Commander Gregoir wasn't so bad," he said. "I wouldn't have wanted to be a recruit under Meredith. That's true enough, although I'm not sure I'd have been quite that ridiculous." He probably would have been. Who is he kidding?

He dried the bowl and set it with the rest of the stack. "It seems as though it would be quiet here. All the more incentive to get out and look for trouble." He adopted a mock shrewd look. "That sounds like incentive for me not to get them to change it. You'll ask me why I'm here so often, and I can say that I hate liver."