"But the doctor says we must on no account have any talking; so come
away, Henry; and here, Jack, is the fruit for Mr D'Arcy. He may eat as
much of it as he likes," said Miss Alice.

I recollect this scene; but I fancy after it I got a relapse, through
which, however, I was mercifully carried, after a tough contest with
death. Oh! how tenderly and kindly I was nursed; every want was
attended to--every wish gratified, almost before expressed--by an old
black woman, who, day or night, scarcely ever left my bedside. I quite
loved her good, old, ugly face--for ugly it was, without the possibility
of contradiction, according to all European notions of beauty, though
some of the descendants of Ham, in her own torrid land, might at one
time have thought it lovely. She was assisted in her labours by a
damsel of the same ebon hue, who had been saved out of the slave ship;
and I believe that the attention of the two women was redoubled on
account of the way I had treated their unhappy countrymen on board that
vessel. Jack Stretcher had been obliged to rejoin the brig, and had
gone away in her. I was, however, frequently favoured by a visit from
Miss Alice Marlow and her kind father, in whose house I remained for
many months, treated as if I had been a well-loved son. At length I was
one morning riding down by the seashore, when the wide-spread canvas of
a man-of-war caught my sight, standing in for the land. I recognised
her at once as the _Opossum_, and was therefore not surprised when, some
hours afterwards, Waller walked into Mr Marlow's drawing-room. Captain
Idle and the doctor followed soon afterwards, and a consultation having
been held, I was pronounced fit for duty, and compelled, with many
regrets, to leave my kind friends, and to go on board. The brig soon
afterwards returned to the coast of Africa, where we took some slavers,
went through various adventures, and lost several officers and men with
fever; and I again fell sick, so that my life was despaired of. Now,
entertaining as these sort of things may be to read about, no one was
sorry when, one fine morning, another brig-of-war hove in sight,
bringing us orders to return home. "Hurra for old England!" was the
general cry, fore and aft. "Hurra! hurra!"

At length I once more found myself an inmate of Daisy Cottage, and many
happy weeks I spent there--perhaps the happiest in my life--in the
society of my uncle and aunt and young cousins. I there slowly,