“I am not young an’ strong like you, Sue,” she said, with a propitiatory smile, “an’ the Lord have not blessed me like you, though I am not ungrateful for His manifold kindness. But I didn’t come here to live on you. Things is very hard in Jamaica, an’ as I know that you married an’ have influence over here, I thought as you might help me to get a little dressmakin’ or washing so as to keep me independent. I don’t want anything but work.”
“Nor me,” said Catherine sturdily. “Nobody can tell me that I can’t make a good living in Panama, though I couldn’t be a servant.”
Mr. Proudleigh said nothing. Now that the talk was of work, and he was actually in Panama, he did not care to remind anyone that while in Jamaica he had never lost an opportunity of proclaiming his readiness to earn his own living whenever the chance of so doing should present itself to him.
But Susan wasn’t thinking of his capabilities just then. In her aunt’s suggestion she saw a way out of the difficulty. “You can get plenty of washin’ if you want it,” she said quickly, “either up here or in Colon. You an’ pupa will ’ave to live together by you’self, but Kate can stop with me.”
“I prefer to go back to Colon,” said Kate. “I like what I see of it, an’ this place look dull.”
“It dull for true!” agreed Susan, “an’ though I would like you to stay with me, I know Colon livelier than up here.”
Mr. Proudleigh, who had been secretly hoping to spend at least some months in the comparative calm of Culebra, did not approve of the suggestion that he should live with his sister or that he should return to Colon. Nor did he like Susan’s reference to the dullness of the labour town in which she lived. It did not argue a contented mind. The house she was mistress of, the furniture she possessed, the leisure she evidently enjoyed seemed to him enough to make any woman happy for the rest of her life, especially if to all these things could be added the blessing of a father’s presence and words of cheer.
“You should be very comfortable, Sue,” he suggested. “A young married ooman like you shouldn’t have a thing to fret her.”
“Don’t you are now a member of society, Sue?” asked her aunt.
“Yes; I belong to de Baptist church up here, an’ I going to join the choir.”