For the next week the forthcoming fancy
ball, to be given by the club, will be the chief
topic of conversation amongst the visitors at
Mussoorie. Mrs. Ludlam is in immense demand.
She knows the character that each
lady will appear in; but it is useless to
attempt to extract from her the slightest
particle of information on that head. This
ball will be worth seven hundred and fifty
rupees to Mrs. Ludlam.

Let us keep away from the club for a few
days; for, after several officers have been victimised
at play, their friends are apt to talk
about the matter in an unpleasant manner.
This frequently leads to a quarrel, which I
dislike to witness.

Where shall we go? To the Dhoon. It is
very hot there; but never mind. No great-coat,
no fires, an hour hence; but the very
lightest of garments and a punkah. The
thermometer is at eighty-five degrees there.
The Dhoon is not a healthy place in the
summer. It must have been the bed of an
enormous lake, or small inland sea. Its soil
being alluvial, will produce anything: every
kind of fruit, European and tropical. You
may gather a peach and a plantain out of the
same garden. Some of the hedges in this part
of the world are singularly beautiful, composed
of white and red cluster roses and
sweetbriars. There is an excellent hotel in
the Dhoon, where we are sure to meet people
whom we know.

Sure enough I find a party of five at the
hotel; all club men and intimate friends of
mine. They, too, have come down to avoid
being present on the first settling day; for,
if there should be any duelling, it is just
possible that some of us might be asked to
act as second.

We must dine off sucking-pig in the
Dhoon. The residents at Mussoorie used
to form their pig-parties in the Dhoon,
just as the residents of London form their
whitebait banquets at Greenwich. I once
took a French gentleman, who was travelling
in India, to one of these pig-parties,
and he made a very humorous note of it in
his book of travel, which he showed to me.
Unlike most foreigners who travel in English
dominions, he did not pick out and note
down all the bad traits in our characters;
but gave us credit for all those excellent
points which his experience of mankind in
general enabled him to observe.

The Governor-General's body-guard is
quartered just now in the Dhoon, and there
is a Goorka regiment here. The Dhoon will
send some twenty couples to the fancy ball
on the seventh. Every lady in the place has
at this moment a Durzee (man tailor) employed
in her back verandah, dress-making.
We are admitted to the confidence of Mrs.
Plowville, who is going as Norma. And a
very handsome Norma she will make; she
being rather like Madame Grisi— and she
knows it.

We return to the club on the second
of June. There has been a serious dispute,
and a duel has been fought; but
happily, no blood shed. The intelligence
of the gambling at the club has reached
the Commander-in-Chief at Simlah; and he
has ordered that the remainder of the leave
granted to Captains Locke and Bunyan be
cancelled, and that those officers forthwith
join their respective regiments. The
victims also have been similarly treated; yet
every one of these remanded officers came up
here on medical certificate.

It is the morning of the seventh of June.
The stewards of the ball are here, there, and
everywhere, making arrangements. Several
old hands, who hate and detest balls, and
who voted against this ball, are walking
about the public room, protesting that it is
the greatest folly they ever heard of. And
in their disgust they blackball two candidates
for admission who are to be balloted for on
the tenth instant. They complain that they
can get no tiffin, no dinner, no anything.
But the stewards only laugh at them.

The supper has been supplied by Monsieur
Emille, the French restaurateur, and a very
splendid supper it is. It is laid out in the
dining-room. Emille is a great artiste. He is
not perhaps equal to Bragier— that great man
whom Louis Philippe gave to his friend, Lord
William Bentinck, when Lord William was
going out to govern India— but Emille,
nevertheless, would rank high even amongst
the most skilful of cuisiniers, in Europe.

It is a quarter past nine, and we, of the
club, are ready to receive our guests. The
ladies come in janpans; their husbands following
them, on horseback or on foot. It is
a beautiful moonlight night. We are always
obliged to wait upon the moon, when we give
a ball in Mussoorie. Before ten o'clock the
room is crowded. There are present one hundred
and thirty-six gentlemen, and seventy-five
ladies. Of the former nine-tenths are
soldiers, the remainder are civilians. Of the
latter, seventy are married; the remaining
five are spinsters.

Here we all are in every variety of costume
— Turks, Greeks, Romans, Bavarian— broom-girls,
Medoras, Corsairs, Hamlets, Othellos,
Tells, Charles the Seconds, and Quakers.
Many have not come in fancy costume, but
in their respective uniforms; and where do
you see such a variety of uniforms as in an
Indian ball-room? Where will you meet with,
so great a number of distinguished men?
There is the old general: that empty sleeve
tells a tale of the battle of Waterloo. Beside
him is a general in the Company's service;
one who has recently received the thanks of
his country. He has seen seventy, but there
is no man in the room who could, at this
very time, endure so great an amount of
mental or bodily fatigue. That youngster
to the right of the general is to be made a
brevet-major and a C.B. as soon as he gets