Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/194

 Indian muslin and lace. I mean to take great care of it, but all the care in the world will not avail in this season, everything grows rusty in a night. My drawings are all blistered, my books all mildewed, my gowns all spotted—in short, everything is going to rack and ruin, and as the milliners and shopkeepers will not open any of their packages this weather, we may, with bad luck, be reduced to going about very odd figures indeed—rather in the native line. I mean to make this letter up out of odd things, strange events that cannot happen to you, manners and customs utterly opposed to your cockney habits.

The day before yesterday the rain came down very much as if the river had got up and out of its bed, and was walking about the park; it actually washed the fish out of the tanks, so that they were hopping about in the grass, and the servants were paddling about catching them. Rosina caught a shocking cold in this exercise, and has been very ill for two days; and because she bought back her caste some weeks ago (which of course she had lost by going to England), it is very difficult to feed her properly; she cannot take any tea or anything that our