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 teen years of active service in India, Somaliland, Egypt, and South Africa. He has not been robust of late, and was given this consular post temporarily. Intends to return to active army service. Mrs. Doughty-Wylie is a little woman full of life and spirits. She loves nursing—has been after the bubonic plague in India and followed the British army in the Boer War. Frank and outspoken, you never know what she is going to say next. She is as vehement as the Major is mild, as bubbling over as he is cool, as Scotch as he is English. They are lovely to us, and as they have taken on with travel a sense of humor, we have great sessions, sitting around a log-fire until all hours of the night. The Major is keen on the Seljuk Turks. He is going to wean Herbert away from French to Ottoman history, I think. Plays up the possibilities of the field for research in glowing terms.

You can imagine how I whooped when Mrs. Doughty-Wylie wrote just after Herbert left