Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/94

 course have, besides our own mosquitoes, his refuse troop to feed. Nobody can guess what those animals are till they have lived amongst them. Many people have been laid up for many weeks by their bites on their first arrival.

Monday, March 7. We had a great many visitors immediately after breakfast, both male and female. The aides-de-camp hand in the ladies and give them chairs, and if there are more in the room at once than we can conveniently attend to, they stay and talk to them; if not, they wait outside and hand the ladies out again. The visits are not long; but I hope they will not all compare notes as to what we have said. I know some of my topics served many times over. Visits are all over at 12.30, on account of the heat. We luncheon at 2 (the people will call it tiffin), and then all go off to our own rooms, take off our gowns, and set the punkahs going, take up a book, and I for one shall generally go to sleep, judging from the experience of the last three days. At 5.30 everybody goes out. We drove to-day to Garden Reach to visit Sir C. Metcalfe, and found George and Captain