Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/23

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LETTERS FROM INDIA.
11

little vaudevilles uncommonly well acted, and the theatre is one of the prettiest I have seen. It makes a very good change from the constant balls, and it is a pity the French people are going away. It was all over at eleven.

Thursday.

I have got a story for some of your smallest children, probably middle-aged men by this time, but a simple story for what they were when I left home. I told Major —— to give the two little boys who wait on Fanny and me gold lace to their turbans and sashes, which is the great aim in life of the under-servants, and as these little boys always stand behind us at dinner, they have a claim to be as smart as the others. But when the liveries were made my little boy, who is the youngest and a good little child in general, had chosen to stay away for a week, thereby losing his lessons as well as staying at home without leave; so I told the sircar not to let him have his smart dress, but to give it to Fanny’s boy without delay, in order to make the moral more striking. When any of the servants are promoted, they always come to make their salaam to all of us, so Fanny’s boy walked into