eeps the punka moving. One night I was so hot I got up and went out
on the veranda, but the boards of the step burned my feet; so I slipped
on my slippers, and tried again. There sat the punka wala nodding, fast
asleep, but keeping his arms moving all the time. It looked funny, I can
tell you.

We have good times in the winter, though. Christmas-day we always have a
picnic. The children of the native Sunday-schools and English schools
join together, and have a good time in some grove. And all through the
winter we play out under the trees, just as mamma says you do in the
summer. But here in summer we can only go out very late in the afternoon
or very early in the morning, because if the mid-day sun touches us, it
will make us very sick, and perhaps we will die. Theo Carter, a girl I
know, when she was real little got away from her nurse, and ran out in
the sun without her hat. It was in the morning, too; and now every time
she gets warm or tired she has the most dreadful headache, and mamma
says she don't believe she will ever be strong, even if she goes to
America. But I guess she would, because everybody that gets sick here
goes to America, else England, and when they come back they are ever so
much better; but sometimes they don't come back, and mamma says people
die even in America.

There are lots of thieves in this country. One night last week they got
into our house. The servants would keep shutting the bath-room
window--the bath-room is between mamma's room and mine--and we wanted it
open for air, and mamma told them so; but they said the thieves would
climb in from a fig-tree near by. But mamma said if they did, they would
be welcome to all they could get. They did get in, and took the clothes
Bertie and I had worn through the day. Baby woke, and they were probably
frightened, and snatched the first thing they could, which was a box of
homoeopathic medicine mamma brought from home. We laughed in the
morning, because they thought, no doubt, it was something valuable, and
it will be worse than nothing to them; but papa says we will cry when we
are sick, and have to take bitter medicine instead of little sugar
pills.

Last week there was a big procession--something about the
government--and one of papa's friends asked us to go to see it, and ride
on an elephant. I was real glad, for I never rode on one but once, and
then I was so little I don't remember much about it. We had a nice ride.
Papa had one elephant