Marching disagrees so much with me, that by the doctor’s advice, and George’s desire, I leave the camp at Agra, and go straight down to Calcutta, where I hope to be the middle of February. George does not expect to be there before the 1st of April, but I rather hope he will, driven by the heat, cut off some of his tour as the time draws nearer. We have been joined on the march by several officers returning from Cabul, and very flourishing they look, and they cannot make out that their sufferings have been what the papers tried to make out. Captain Dawkins, of Lord Auckland’s Bodyguard, who has been through the campaign with a regiment to which he lawfully belongs, has come back looking fatter than most Falstaffs, and he brought back three of the sheep which he left with us at Ferozepore last year, so that danger of starving was not great. God bless you, dearest Theresa. This is a very stupid letter, but then it is better than none, which is what I have had from you. And you cannot imagine how hot it is. Your most affectionate E. EDEN. CHAPTER XII 1840-1842 _Miss Eden to Mr. C. Greville._ BARRACKPORE, _March 13, 1840_. MY DEAR MR. GREVILLE, I give it up; I succumb; I see clearly I was all wrong; generally am, quite mistaken, very sorry, very stupid, etc. But you and every friend I have will do me the justice to say that since the first year we passed here I have mentioned openly that I was regularly twaddling, that I hardly remembered a proper name, and _never_ knew what was meant for jest or earnest. I have written it home twenty times, and it is not a complaint peculiar to me, but common to everybody who has passed a hot season or two in India. Their brains are fairly stewed down into a harmless jelly; and it is a merciful dispensation that, as they have not bodily strength to laugh at a joke, they have not wit left to understand one. I still think that your irony was too fine even for England--I mean, I might have been puzzled there; here, of course, I took it all _au pied de la lettre_. I should not have minded it so much, if just at the moment when George had hazarded himself in a line that must have ended in success or in impeachment, he had not been turned upon by almost all the Indian authorities, and every paper without exception. I did not care for their opinions, wretched little buzzings of Indian mosquitoes, but when an imposing English hornet came down upon me with the same small Toryisms, as I thought, I could not stand it. However, I see it all clearly now, so let us make it up. “Hostess, I forgive thee: look to thy servants. Wash thy face. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me.”