Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/142

 but then, as you say, I can forget it again to-morrow. She consistently writes “to-day” and “to-morrow” throughout [sic]

Poor old Rosina has been so dreadfully ill. I thought for two days she would have died, but Dr. Drummond thinks the danger is going by to-day. I should be so sorry if anything happened to her, and so would all the house. George’s servants have asked leave to wait on me while he is away, and I am so afraid of his nazir, whom we always call ‘the genteelest of men’ (see Hood), and who is a most distinguished-looking individual, that I have taken to wait on myself. The first morning I asked the nazir to send one of the tribe that follows him—the lowest of course I mean—to fetch a glass of water for Chance, and he brought it himself. I thought I should have fainted away when I saw Chance, who is too idle to sit up, lying lapping out of this glass held by the ‘genteelest of men’ and a well-born Mussulman; I snatched the glass, and scolded the dog, and salaamed the nazir, and ever since I have gone poking about the tent looking for the Kedgeree pot full of water the bearers bring, and if it is not there Chance must just die of thirst.

We have had Lord Jocelyn four days in