My dearest Mary,—An officer who is going home in the ‘Robarts’ has just called to take leave, and he says a letter will overtake the ship which dropped down the river yesterday, and I am sure if he does, a letter may. I envied the old fellow. He is going home after thirty-two uninterrupted years of India, and is quite curious about Regent Street and the Zoological and all the old stories; and then he is not going home friendless, for, after having talked of rejoining his children there, he said, to my utter surprise, ‘I shall like to take my children abroad, and make acquaintance with them travelling, but I must first pass some time with my mother. I have not seen her for thirty-two years.’ ‘What a fine fat boy she will think you,’ I could hardly help saying.
My particular object in running off a line is to tell Robert that his protégé of a barber, whom he recommended to Mars, has been this very day engaged to be hairdresser and barber to the King of Oude, at a salary of four hundred
