After service to-day, the dining-room was given up to Giles and the Philistines, the carpets taken up, and a long country dance formed of the camel trunks and linen-presses that we leave behind; and now we dine and live in the drawing-room, which, without its curtains and draperies, and with its crude folding-doors, looks like half a ball-room at a Canterbury inn. Poor dear house! I am sorry to see it despoiled. We have had seven as good months here as it is possible to pass in India--no trouble, no heat; and if the Himalayas were only a continuation of Primrose Hill or Penge Common, I should have no objection to pass the rest of my life on them. Perhaps you would drive up to Simla on Saturday and stay till Monday. Monday, Nov. 5. I had much better not write to-day, only I have nothing else to do; but the September overland post is come (the August is missing), and I always have a regular fit of low spirits that lasts twenty-four hours after that. This is your Newsalls letter, and dear T.'s account of the archery and country balls, and the neighbours; and it all sounds so _natural_ and easy, and I feel so _unnatural_ and so far off. Just as you say, we have been here very little more than half our time, and I am sure it feels and is almost a life. It will be nearly six years altogether that we shall have been away, if we ever go home again; and that is an immense gap, and coming at a wrong time of life. Ten or fifteen years ago it would have made less difference; your children would still have been children; but now I miss all _their_ youth, and _ours_ will be utterly over. We shall meet again---- When youth and genial years have flown, And all the life of life is gone. I feel so very old, not merely in look, for that is not surprising at my age, and in this country, where everybody looks more than fifty; but just what Lady C. describes in her letter--the time for _putting up_ with discomforts has gone by. I believe what adds to my English letter lowness, is the circumstance that carpets, curtains, books, everything is gone from my room, and I am sitting in the middle of it, on a straw beehive chair, which the natives always use when they _do_ admit a chair, with Chance's own little chair for my feet, and the inkstand on the ledge of the window. I wish I was at Newsalls. There! now they want my inkstand. Syree, Tuesday, Nov. 6. The beginning of a second march, and so I had better put this up and send it. We left poor Simla at six this morning, and if I am to be in India I had rather be there than anywhere. We have had seven very quiet months, with good health and in a good climate, and in beautiful scenery. That is much as times go. As for this march, I cannot say what I feel about it. It began just as it left off. We arrived to breakfast here, and the coolies have been fractious, and so, when I took off my habit, I had no gown to put on; the right box is not come, and I have no bonnet to put on for the afternoon's march.