Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/195

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LETTERS FROM INDIA.
183

time we have been here; he seemed so incorrigibly young when we came away. I suspect Chance is rather a ridiculous ci-devant jeune homme; he has a decided grey beard, but still runs after birds, and tries to catch frogs, and affects to pay court to Fairy. Now, counting by Dandy, he ought to be long past all that. His own Jimmund has been ill for a month, and the jemadar of that class of men volunteered his services to Chance. He has been forty years in Government House, and considers himself too great a man to wear a red turban and sash, but walks about in draperies of white muslin with a long flowing white beard, and it was rather fine to see the old fat man and the old fat dog taking their evening walk on the plain—Chance so dreadfully bored—and he was so delighted when Jimmund came back yesterday. Rosina says, ‘That jemadar tell Chance, “Ah, Chance, you old dog, I old man; we very like each other; what for you like young man best?"'

We have at last had letters from —— at Singapore, June 4, written in remarkably good spirits, and he was going on in the ‘Conway.’ The fleet had been obliged to sail for Macao on the 30th, for fear of typhoons, but