be here in two or three days. Little Pertâb is as nice a child as ever, W. says, and remembers all the English words we taught him. They all cried and salaamed to the picture of Runjeet Singh, which W. had copied from my sketch, and he was obliged to give it to the old fakeer.

Monday, Sept. 16.

W. O. got home this morning, having ridden from Lahore in three days; above sixty miles a day, and the thermometer at 110°, enough to kill him, but he does not seem the worse for it, though he looks very thin. He says he missed one of his relays of horses and lay down under a tree to sleep while the guide rode on for a conveyance, and when he woke, he found one of the Akalees (those wild bigots of whom even Runjeet was afraid) sitting by him and fanning him with a large fan. Touching!

We are going to a ball to-night, which the married gentlemen give us; and instead of being at the only public room, which is a broken, tumble-down place, it is to be at the C.'s, who very good naturedly give up their house for it.

Wednesday, Sept. 18.

The ball went off with the greatest success; transparencies of the taking of Ghuznee, ‘Auckland' in all directions, arches and verandahs made up of flowers; a whist table for his lordship, which is always a great relief at these balls, and every individual at Simla was there. There was a supper-room for us, made up of velvet and gold hangings belonging to the durbar, and a standing supper all night for the company in general, at which one very fat lady was detected in eating five suppers. We came away at one, but it was kept up till five and altogether succeeded. W., after all that journey, sat up till five.

Thursday, Sept. 19.

The July overland came in yesterday, and I have got your nice fat letter from Newsalls, and the journal of your last month in London. I remember the pain of leaving London at the end of the second season. It was such dreadful hagony,' as the boy says, in Oliver Twist,' that I quite enter into T.'s feelings. E. is pretty well for the first year, and I expect will show stronger symptoms of the disease next year. The third year I shall be at home, to hear all about it,

which will be amazingly good fun; and in the meantime you cannot imagine the treasures these journals are. Only think how pleasant! An old Colonel Skinner, a native as black as this ink, whose life you can see in Miss Roberts' book, writes to W. that, 'If the Miss Edens do not wish to mortify an old soldier, and bring down his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, they will accept a pair of shawls he has ordered for them in Cashmere, and which have just arrived. If they return them, he shall imagine they look upon him as a native, and not as an old British soldier.' Nothing evidently could be more palpably indelicate than to refuse them. I am the last woman in the world to hurt any body's feelings by returning any shawl, to say nothing of a white one, made on purpose in Cashmere, and if he had thrown in a scarf, I should have thought his appearance and complexion only too fair for a British soldier. Do you think they will be long shawls, or square?

CHAPTER XVI.

Simla, Friday, Sept. 27, 1839.

IT appears that our last letters will again be too late for the steamer. G. always keeps the express till it is a day too late for the steamer. In fact, if he has a fault (I don't think he has, but if he has), it is a slight disposition to trifle with the English letters, just on the same principle as he always used to arrive half an hour too late for dinner at Longleat and Bowood. He never will allow for the chance of being too late, and now, for two months running, his despatches have been left at Bombay.

We had our fancy fair on Wednesday, which went off with great éclât, and was really a very amusing day, and moreover produced 6,500 rupees, which, for a very small society, is an immense sum. When we arrived at the Auckland Gate,' which was the same as last year, we were stopped by a gang of gipsies, who had their little tent and their donkey, and the pot boiling

on three sticks, and a boy plucking a fowl and another with a hare, &c. X. and L. and a Captain C. were disguised as gipsies, and the most villanous-looking set possible; and they told our fortunes, and then came on to the fair and sang an excellent song about poor old Colonel and a little hill fort that he has been taking; but after the siege was over, he found no enemy in it, otherwise it was a gallant action. X. showed me the song some days ago, and I thought it might affront the old man if it came upon him unawares, so they showed it to him first, and he adopted it as his own joke.

Then the selling at the stalls began, and everything was bought up very quickly; then there was a raffle for my two pictures, and we reduced the tickets to 3 rupees each, and would not let anybody take more than three, and yet, with that they produced 751. Rather a shame! but I could not help it a little single figure, which I had done in two mornings, and promised to W. O., was put up to auction when he was away, and fetched 157., so I must do another for him. F. sent a great collection of toys she had made in the Bazaar, which produced 201. Mr. C. was an excellent auctioneer for the four things that were