hours every
morning, except in the very hottest weather; and the only help she had
was from a sergeant of the regiment, a kind, good man. Some of the
officers also were very thankful to send their children to school, so
that Mrs. Sherwood soon had as many as fifty boys and girls coming
daily to her bungalow. Very hard work it was teaching them to read and
write and to be gentle, truthful, and obedient. She found the officers'
children generally more troublesome than the soldiers', because they
were more spoilt, or, as she puts it, pampered and indulged. For these
children she wrote many of her books, especially her _Stories on the
Church Catechism_, which can still be bought, and which give a very
interesting picture of the life of a soldier's child in India some
eighty years ago.

Besides her day-school, Mrs. Sherwood collected in her house several
little orphans, the children of poor soldiers' wives who quickly died
in the trying climate of India. She found some of these children being
dreadfully neglected and half starved, so took them home to her and
brought them up with her own children. She gives an amusing description
of her home life in India during the hot season, so terribly trying to
Europeans: "The mode of existence of an English family during the hot
winds in India is so very unlike anything in Europe that I must not
omit to describe it. Every outer door of the house and every window is
closed; all the interior doors and venetians are, however, open, whilst
most of the private apartments are shut in by drop-curtains or screens
of grass, looking like fine wire-work, partially covered with green
silk. The hall, which never has any other than borrowed lights in any
bungalow, is always in the centre of the house, and ours at Cawnpore
had a large room on each side of it, with baths and sleeping-rooms. In
the hot winds I always sat in the hall at Cawnpore. Though I was that
year without a baby of my own, I had my orphan, my little Annie, always
by me, quietly occupying herself when not actually receiving
instruction from me. I had given her a good-sized box, painted green,
with a lock and key; she had a little chair and table.

"She was the neatest of all neat little people, somewhat faddy and
particular, perchance. She was the child, of all others, to live with
an ancient grandmother. Annie's treasures were few, but they were all
contained in her green box. She never wanted occupation; she was either
dressing