the letters, and pick out a stitch here and put in a patch there, and bring dates and hints together, and make out a story of a life for you all. I dare say not at all the true one, but still it sounds so to us, and it does very well. Now you can’t do that for us; you can’t put the scenery to us, nor the right faces to the people just now. I have not been well for five days; supposed to have caught cold by sitting in front of a tattee—the first day of the tattees, and the bheesties wetted it so well, that I caught my death by it. Now you don’t see the scene, with the thatched windows and the black gentlemen without clothing splashing water all over them.
My dearest ,—This is the hopeless experiment we all weakly make of sending letters overland, but I am not going to say much to you, because I am just sending you off a regular book of a letter by sea, the sort of thing you will never get through but then ‘it shows my devotion.’ I am also sending you, at
