Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/332

 box, I asked Mr. and Mrs. and several other people to go with me.

Thursday, 9th. Tuesday morning a huge box of lovely articles—shawls, kinkobs, turbans, &c.—was sent to me to look at. They belonged to a Mrs., a native woman of very high caste and very beautiful, who was married both by the Mussulman and Protestant rites to an English Colonel , who took her to England last year, and he died on the passage home. She has never changed her native habits, cannot speak a word of English, and is quite helpless and ignorant. She came back in the ship that took her out under the care of her eldest boy, who has been brought up at home and cannot speak a word of Hindustani; so he and his mother cannot have much communication. All the magnificent trousseau which Colonel provided for her use in England has never been touched. They say it is quite melancholy to see her sitting on the floor, as natives do, with a coarse veil over her head, moaning over her loss. Her children are all brought up at home as English people, and she