ly talk. I don't know that I am "in love,"--I
don't like the expression anyway,--but this I know, that if you were
not in the world it would be an unpeopled waste to me. The place you
happen to be in is where all interest centres. Every minute of the
time as I go through my days, laughing, talking, enjoying myself
vastly, away at the back of my mind the thought of you lies "hidden
yet bright," making for me a new heaven and a new earth. Is this
caring? Is this what you want to hear me say? I can't write what I
would like, I can't weave pretty things, I can only speak straight on,
but oh, my dear, I am so glad that in this big, confusing world we
have found each other. Poor Rocking Horse Fly! poor fat friend! how
dull for them, how dull for all the rest of the people in the world
not to have a _you_!

I am not going to write any more, not because I haven't lots to say,
but because writing much or talking much about a thing--being queer
and Scots, it is hard for me to say love--seems somehow to cheapen it,
profane it.

I have opened this just to say again, My dear, my dear!

_Calcutta, April 21_.

... only three more days in India, and I don't know whether I am
horribly sorry to go or profoundly relieved to get away. There is no
doubt it is a sudden and dangerous country. Three people we knew have
died suddenly of cholera, and two others have had bombs thrown at
them. I shall be thankful to find myself safely on board the steamer,
but even if I escape I am leaving Boggley in the midst of these
perils. Not that he lets the thought of them vex his soul. You learn,
he says, to look upon death in a different way in India, but I am sure
I never could learn to regard with equanimity the thought of being
quite well one day and being hurried away to the Circular Road
Cemetery early the next. It is sad to die in a foreign land, and it is
somehow specially sad, at least I think so, for a home-loving Scot to
lie away from home.

"Tell me not the good and wise
Care not where their dust reposes.
That to him who sleeping lies
Desert rocks shall seem as roses.
I've been happy above ground,
I could ne'er be happy under,
Out of Teviot's gentle sound.
Part us, then, not far asunder."

Yesterday I saw a pathetic sight. A couple in a _tikka-gharry_; the
man a soldier, a Gordon Highlander, and on the front seat a tiny
coffin. The man's arm was round the woman's shoulder, and she was
crying bitterly. A bit of sh