Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/266

 very improper nautch. And George has just given them new scarlet and gold dresses for the cold weather, so they finished off our group very handsomely. Some of the native princes who were there, had some very magnificent jewels, and there were some genuine Chinese dresses made of the sort of embroidered silk which I have always believed in, from knowing that the Chinese were the cleverest people in the world, but never saw. We came away at 12.30, quite astonished to find ourselves up so late. That is about the time we should be going to a ball in England. I am horridly tired to-day.

We had a long visit from a lady who is just come from Ava, where she has been two years without seeing any European woman, but one—and the Burmese treat the English just as contemptuously as the Chinese do. She was a nice good-humoured woman—all the nicer for bringing us a quantity of pretty Burmese curiosities. She said she was very fond of her one European friend at Ava, and thought her the cleverest woman she had ever seen, ‘but she is not fond of jokes, and sometimes I wanted to laugh, and except a doctor, who came to Ava, and who