Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/140

 them down here, they may turn out pleasant. The weather is growing hotter and hotter, and will for the next two months; then it will grow damper and damper. No milliner will sell silks or satins during these damp months, because ‘they cannot expose them to the air. The waste and cost of every article of dress here is quite wonderful; but still the climate is not yet worse than I expected—rather better, in spite of heat and damp; for the house is not very hot, thanks to the punkahs. To be sure, the prisoners in Newgate have more liberty during the day, for they can, I believe, walk about the prison-yard and look out of their grated windows. From sunrise to sunset we are shut up, and the glare is too great to look out; our cells are more spacious, and we never stole, or murdered; that is the great difference; transported we were six months ago.

I’ve got such a paroquet! too pretty, and tame, and clever; even when most incensed, it does not bite; I’m very much distressed, because my jemadhar, whom the Europeans always address as Jemmy Dar, wears a dagger, and no other person does. I think he will ‘dag’ me, which I gently suggested to Captain Byrne, who