Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/181

 alone, which was almost as good as Billy Pitt in a blaze.

God bless you, dearest! Love to all. Ever yours most affectionately, E. E.

Calcutta, May 28, 1840.

—I am rather unhappy you should have been pulled down by that horrid influenza. I hope, however, we may soon hear that you are looking younger and better than ever. I must trouble you not to alter, because I am just having you made up on a very pretty pattern. That little picture Wilson did of you for me has always been so much admired, and it strikes me as the most exact likeness I ever saw; but India disagrees with it; it has had a liver complaint, and the background all turned yellow during the rains at Simla; then the white ants chose to eat holes in it, one month that I left it at Barrackpore and that it was not attended to. Altogether my dear little picture was not the lovely girl it had been. We had often observed in our drives to Ballygange (Ballygange is our Eltham