His easy camaraderie of manner was so remarkable that a friend once asked Gatacre whether he had ever found that people took advantage of it, and treated him with undue familiarity, to which he replied that he had {103} never known them try. He defended himself with a dry and subtle humour. Assuming an impenetrable blandness of manner, he would on occasion utter sarcasms so veiled that some men could scarcely tell whether he was in earnest or not. He was never angry, but he had a command of quiet language that made his remarks as stinging as they were humorous. The man on the pillory would feel the sting, and the onlooker would see the humour. When another friend asked him why he was taking so much trouble over a matter that appeared outside the sphere of his interests, and scarcely worthy of the attention that he was lavishing on it, his reply seemed weighted with reproof as he said: "I don't think I ever knew what the meaning of the word trouble was." [Sidenote: Goes on tour] In the province of Bombay the inspections take place in the cold weather between November and March; a spell of hot weather then precedes the break of the monsoon early in June. The rains last till September, and are followed by another spell of hot weather, till the air cools down again to quite a pleasant temperature in November. The first inspection tour arranged for the end of 1891 included a visit to the regiments quartered at Kamptee in the Central Provinces. Kamptee was the Headquarters of the Nagpur District, to the command of which Brigadier-General John Gatacre, C.B., had been recently gazetted. To those who have heard of "inspection fever" (and even the best officers {104} are not always immune), it will be obvious that the station must have been in rather a commotion at the idea of a visit from the Commander-in-chief only four days after the arrival of a new General Officer Commanding. But the new General was well known and trusted in Kamptee, for he had already been in the station for three years while in command of his regiment. [Sidenote: A railway accident]