* * * * *
How very quickly the days flew by in the Paramaribo, the "old Pram," as the sailors unceremoniously called her. But the life to Kep was all so new and delightful.
The voyage came to an end at last, and at Jamaica a really pleasant old lady, as Kep called her in his own mind, resolved to carry the boy away inland. Well, as he did not object to see a little of the beautiful interior, he readily consented.
What a tropical paradise it was she brought him to! And life amidst the sublimity of such mountain scenery, under a tropical sky, and with such magnificence of flowers around him, was to Kep with his ardent temperament and his love of romance and poetry like a foretaste of Heaven.
The house itself was larger than his father's, as white as the snows of Ben Nevis, wherever a glimpse could be caught of its walls, through the wealth of climbing flowers that surrounded it and clustered over its verandas.
The gardens were gorgeous, and Kep laughed with delight to see the bright-winged birds dashing through and through the white spray of the fountains, that played here and there on the sward.
The lady had a quiet and gentle husband who seemed to be her loving slave, so fond was he of her. She had children too, boys and girls, dark-eyed like himself and browned-skinned as Ethiops.
"Live here always, and for ever," said little Zuleika to him one day, "and be our brother."
But there was restlessness in the boy's heart before he had been among these enchanted hills and dells a fortnight.
"No, Zulee," he said. "I must away and soon," and then he told the child all about his sister and his own English home, all that she could understand.