Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/42

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30
LETTERS FROM INDIA.

thermometer is 87° in my room, and I have discovered an accidental draft in the Marble Hall, where the wind comes down one of the corridors, cooled by the tatties, and where Fanny and I have sat all this week without a punkah; the draft is so strong Major —— said it was very unwholesome, and that Lady William never sat there, which I assured him must simply have been because she never had the luck to find out this curious draft; upon which he sent the doctor to say how prejudicial it must be; but the doctor found it so pleasant that he drew in an arm-chair and thought it much the best place in the house.

Major —— is a remarkably sly old fox. Fanny and I have often observed it, and we constantly find him out now. He manages us in a sly, pleasant way, buttering and smoothing, but he sees through everybody and provides accordingly.

A shocking piece of foxishness I detected to-day which will be the utter wreck of my happiness. George’s head servant, who claims the title of ‘the nazir’ and who was a treasure in his way, went to his own house at Dacca to try to get rid of a Bengal fever, which had