In A Year And A Half Cuckoo Had Grown Immensely, And Being In A Good
Suit Of Clothes, He Was With Difficulty Recognized By His Savage-Looking
Parent, Who Had Parted With Him As A Naked, Ash-Smeared Little Urchin Of
Between Six And Seven Years Old.
I am sorry to say that Cuckoo did not meet his father with an
affectionate embrace, but at first positively refused to go with him;
and when compelled to accompany him as a prodigal son and wanderer, he
dug his knuckles into his eyes and began to cry.
Poor little Cuckoo knew
that the days of beef and good cooking had passed away. He expressed his
determination to run away from his father and to return to us; but as
his home was on the west bank of the Nile, we never saw Cuckoo again.
The boys and young women whom I had liberated from the slave-hunters,
and who had acted as domestic servants, were well cared for at the close
of the expedition, and I secured them situations with well-known
respectable families in Cairo and Alexandria. Amarn, the Abyssinian boy,
who in intelligence had been far in advance of the negro lads,
accompanied his mistress to England at his express request, where he is
now regularly installed in our own household. The ulcerated leg from
which he had suffered for two years in Africa, was soon cured by the
kind attention of the surgeons of St. George's Hospital, shortly after
his arrival in London.
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