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.