set off in the rain for Calcutta. The diningroom is larger than Willis’s Room at Almack’s, and I am not exaggerating when I say that there was not a place in it where we could step without crushing twenty of these creatures, which are much larger than common flies. They shake off their wings after they have been five minutes in the house, and all the white marble tables were quite brown and covered some depth with these discarded wings. We have only seen this twice, but it has made me believe all the odd stories about ants that Mrs. Carmichael told in her book on the West Indies.
We had our dinner at the Bishop’s yesterday; he is such a good-natured old man; it is impossible not to like him. He had asked all his other guests at half-past seven, and we were to come at eight, and he had been sitting, they said, half-an-hour downstairs, for fear of not meeting George on the steps. He asked fifty-four people into a room that was meant to hold forty, but luckily it was a cool, rainy evening, and his dinner and establishment were much better than any I have seen.
