Mingy

'And weren't you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel was dead?' 'No! They were a mingy lot.' He laughed suddenly. 'The Colonel used to say: Lad, the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would give them a stoppage. They're the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented: full of conceit of themselves, frightened even if their boot-laces aren't correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That's what finishes me up. Kow-tow, kow-tow, arse-licking till their tongues are tough: yet they're always in the right. Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each--'

The dark girl tossed her hat on the bed and hastily produced a packet of cigarettes from her bag, lighting and inhaling one with a deep exhalation of relief, saying, "Thank God for a cigarette! It's the only thing I will thank the mingy old blighter for."

After the Liberation Mrs Crewe kept on being as mingy as before with the food; and wouldn't let Harold buy any new clothes.

Now all that, in its mingy way, is logical enough.