Madame would never hear any
complaints of the heat from me or from Matilda. Summer at Bush House, in
the nature of things, could be nothing to summer in India, to which we
were accustomed. It was useless to point out that in India the rooms in
which we lived were large, well shaded, and ventilated by constant
currents of fresh air. Also that there, our heaviest meal, our longest
walk, and our hardest work were not all crowded into the hottest hours
of the day.

"England is at no time so warm as India," said Madame.

"I suppose we are not as hot as the cook," suggested little "Peony" as
we now called her, one very hot day, when we sat languidly struggling
through our work in the stifling atmosphere of the school-room. "I
thought of her to-day when I looked at that great fat leg of roast
mutton. We're better off than she is."

"And she's better off than if she were in the Black Hole of Calcutta;
but that doesn't make either her or us cool," said Emma Lascelles, an
elder girl. "Don't preach, Peony; lessons are bad enough in this heat."

"I shan't eat any dinner to-morrow, I think," said Eleanor; "I cannot
keep awake after it this weather, so it's no use."

"I wish I were back at Miss Martin's for the summer," said another girl.

We knew to what this referred, and Madame being by a rare chance absent,
we pressed for an account, in English, of Miss Martin's arrangements in
the hot weather. "Miss Martin's" was a school at which this girl had
been before she came to Bush House.

"I can't think why on earth you left her," said Eleanor.

"Well, this is nearer home for one thing, and the masters are better
here, certainly. But she did take such care of us. It wasn't everlasting
backaches, and headaches, and coughs, and pains in your side all along.
And when the weather got hot (and it was a very warm summer when I was
there), and she found we got sleepy at work after dinner, and had
headaches in the afternoon, she said she thought we had better have a
scrap meal in the middle of the day, and dine in the cool of the
evening; and so we used to have cold rice-pudding or thick
bread-and-butter, such as we should have had for tea, or anything there
was, and tumblers of water, at one, and at half-past five we used to
wash and dress; and then at six, just when we were getting done up with
the heat and work, and yet cool enough to eat, we had dinner. I can tell
you a good fat roast leg of mutton looked all right then! It cured a