Oyama BC     B.C     Canada

Feb 4^th

Dearest Mib

          I was delighted with the humours of India you so kindly sent me. I often look at the Dherzi & and the Dhobi and laugh. The Dhobi reminds me of Kodai and our night gowns torn to ribbons & the way you insisted upon Mrs. Butterworth cutting the man's pay till there was no pay left: in fall I think he owed us in the end! I still have one nightie lift that dear generous Mrs. B. insisted on buying to replace my torn ones! I hardly even wear it but keep it as a relic! Besides crepe ones are so much easier to wash -- you don't have to iron them!

We have just had a horrid cold snap -- luckily it only lasted a few days -- 15 degrees below zero, that is -47 degrees of frost. I went out one day but my face was frostbitten before being out 10 minutes. Luckily Bob saw it before much harm was done. I gaily wore 3 wooly coats one on top of the other and then a fur coat. [Yours of yore?], and moccasins on my feet. The horses bits have to be brought into the kitchen and warmed for some time before harnessing -- else the horses tongues are skinned by contact with the icy metal! However, it is not like last year I am thankful to say as it only lasted a short time and last year we had week after week below zero.

How is your book progressing, I long for news of it!

You laugh at me for attending meetings etc. Don't you have any to go to? You w^d [would] make an excellent president of a Women's Institiute! We have one or two women here who spoil things so by wanting to mange everything -- by being very touchy & annoyed if anybody else wants to manage a little bit! & such little jealousies, it makes me loathe the whole lot of them sometimes. I suppose every little place is the same -- but we have quite a little Methodist colony -- awfully good people -- but they are rather small, don't you think so? There is a very nice retired Presbyterian missionary from China & his wife. Both quite wide and generous in their ideas.

I meant to write before to ask you if you have the chance, or know anybody who could do so -- to look up a man invalided at Wellington, Nilgeris:

Gunner J. Newton R9A
70829
Hut Barracks, Wellington Nilgeris

I daresay he may be better by now and moved on. He was invalided from Mesopotamia to Bombay for enterie and then in to Wellington.

A near ranching neighbour of ours and a very good fellow. You will have to try to remember that tho' he hardly posses an'th [anything] yet I dance with him out here!! He is probably frightfully homesick & it w^d [would] be a great kindness to find him out. He gave up a lot here to go home & join -- so deserves well of somebody.

Much luck and wish you everything good for 1917.
Yr. very affec.
D. Allison

Footnotes:

Dherzi: One who sews and mends -- a kind of private tailor.

Dhobi: A washer of clothes.

Dorothea Allison Letters
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