“And don’t you’ husband treat you good?” inquired her father.
“Of course! I didn’t say him didn’t!”
This sharp answer, given in the form of a threatening question, checked at once the impending flow of Mr. Proudleigh’s interrogatory. But further to prevent any more personal inquiries, and remembering that her relatives must be hungry, Susan invited them into the dining-room, where they found a table covered with a clean cloth, a meat-safe, and a few chairs. She took some cold food out of the meat-safe and placed it before them, offering the older folk, in addition, a little Jamaica rum, which Mackenzie always kept in the house. This they drank at once, Mr. Proudleigh secretly hoping for a further supply of the same liquor. He expressed his astonishment at the thirst created by the Panamanian climate, then prepared himself to dine.
CHAPTER II
CATHERINE LEARNS SOMETHING
Susan was no longer annoyed with her people for their unexpected appearance. Now that it had been decided that they were to live by themselves and do something to earn their living, she felt glad that they had come to Panama. They would not be very far from her; she could go to see them fairly often; the old associations, severed when she left Jamaica, were renewed once more. With her elbows on the table and her entwined fingers supporting her chin, she watched them eat with a pleasant glow of hospitality. “Tell me all about home,” she said. “You ever see Maria?”
“No,” said Catherine; “but I meet Hezekiah one day, an’ him tell me that Maria hear that you married: somebody write from Colon to tell her. She will never get a man to put a ring on her finger. You ever see Tom an’ Jones since you married, Sue?”
“No; I don’t think them ever come up this way; an’ since I married, going eight weeks now, I never leave Culebra once.”
“Jones never write you?” asked her aunt.
“No! Him couldn’t do that. I have nothing more to do wid him.”
“I never did like dat young man,” said Mr. Proudleigh with grave deliberation. “He talk too much, an’ him always using big words dat I couldn’t understand. I never thoughted that you would be happy with him, Sue.”