It is such a nice day to-day. The rains ended last Wednesday. After five days of an even down-pour, there came a storm of wind that might have changed the places of some of the little hills, if they had been addicted to hopping, and which devastated my little garden, which happens to be on the windy side of the house; but since that, we have not had a drop of rain. The snowy range has appeared again after a fog of three months. The hills are all blue and green and covered with flowers, and there is a sharp, clear air that is perfectly exhilarating. I have felt nothing like it, I mean nothing so English, since I was on the terrace at Eastcombe, except perhaps the week we were at the Cape. It is a shame of the storm to have twisted my one honeysuckle into a wisp of dead leaves; to have laid low our only double dahlia, and to have broken off a branch of _the_ lavender bush of Simla. All these treasures G. deposited in my little garden at the back of the house, and this is the result of his unguarded confidence. The dahlia was of that rhubarb and magnesia colour which makes you hear the spoon _grit_ against the cup as you look at it. Still it was the only double dahlia in India; but that will revive again. The honeysuckle is a mortifying business. Colonel V. has another, and he used to come crowing and stuttering here about this 'cu-cu-cu-curious plant' of his which suddenly took a dwarfish turn and stopped growing; whereas mine had reached the top of the house, and old V. used to call once a week to look at it. Now, I don't mind the loss of Colonel V.'s visits, but I did like to make him envious of my honeysuckle. We are all dreadfully within sight of travelling again, but there are still six weeks of repose, so that I am as deaf as a post when the word '_tent_' is mentioned. Still, the subject of provisions, and marches, and agents and magistrates, must be alluded to. Don't you think it would be worth my while to buy a pot of paint, out of my own allowance, from the Simla 'Europe shop,' and have the acorns and oak leaves painted _out_ of the lining of my tent? The lining is buff, with sprigs of oak leaves, and there is an occasional mistake in the pattern, which distracts me; and there is such an association of dust and bore and bad health with those acorns, that I do not think I _can_ encounter them again. We are to leave this on November 5. I mention that openly, because if Guy Faux wishes to keep his '_day_,' it would, perhaps, be better and more humane to blow up people who are going into camp, than people who live in houses. Sept. 13.