For the acquaintance--the friendship I think I may write now--of this young lady, I am indebted to my cook Malvina. We had left the Hyde and gone to live at Montego Bay, and the family wanted milk, wanted it rather badly, as Samuel Hyde Parsons, “young massa up at Hyde,” was but a small person and milk is a precious commodity in Montego Bay. Many people got it out of a tin. We did at first. And Malvina suggested--“Why not missus writing to Miss Maxwell Hall? Miss Maxwell Hall kindly supplying.” I didn't know whether the lady would be “kindly supplying” or not, but I thought the offer of cash down might induce her to do so. And my letter brought me a visit from a laughing girl in a motor, who said she did sell milk, rather to the horror of some of her relations who felt that the most she ought to do was to “oblige a few friends.” She, finding her milk going to waste, had advanced a step further and did not see why she should not oblige herself, and had set to work putting that milk-walk upon a business basis. And there and then on the verandah looking out over the sea, we struck up a friendship based on my unbounded admiration for her and her work. Presently I was looking for a house without being able to find one that suited my needs, and she came to my rescue with an invitation to the three of us, myself, Eva and the baby, to go to Kempshot Pen. And there I saw a side of life which gave me not only great hopes of Jamaica, but for all the tropical possessions of Britain. Here was a place run--by a woman, a young woman--and run frankly for gain and for the good of all the people surrounding it. Charlotte Maxwell Hall is Jamaican born (of English parents) and she loves her home, and she is making a beginning of a new phase in that land. What she is doing to the surprise of her generation, the next generation will be keen on doing and they will regenerate Jamaica. Not that there are not rich pens and well kept pens, but they are managed by men and they are much greater in extent. Kempshot specially attracted me because it was run by a young woman of an age when many girls are thinking only of their amusement, run not only with the intention of getting every ounce of good out of the soil, but of putting back into that soil all the good that came out out of it. And the place where she earns her livelihood, the place where the slaves rose and ninety years ago drove Major Hall and his wife fleeing in the night down through the jungle for their very lives, bids fair to be a very jewel among homesteads, a model for all Jamaican homesteads. I only trust the loneliness of it will not drive her away. And then, of course, with a woman, and an attractive one, there is always the danger that some man may persuade her to marry him and he will carry her off.