“I don’t think so. Him was wild an’ foolish, an’ thought that I care for him so much that I wouldn’t leave him. If he was different I would be with him now, even if him didn’t married me.”
Catherine looked wise. “I always say it is better not to married too quick,” she observed; “for you may find you make a mistake, an’ then you can’t do nothing.”
But here Susan thought that perhaps she had said too much, even to her sister. So she remarked, with emphasis, that, after all, she was very comfortable, and that Mackenzie was kind to her and never quarrelled with her. “I don’t ’ave a word to say against him,” she asserted truthfully.
Then she and Catherine rejoined the others, for she was now expecting her husband at any moment.
He came in presently, glanced inquiringly at Susan, who was about to say who the strangers were, when Mr. Proudleigh, who for a week had been rehearsing a little speech he had prepared to greet Mackenzie with, stood up in haste and unceremoniously interrupted his daughter. The old man had been an Odd Fellow in his younger days, and had frequently figured as “chaplain” in the lodge. He now chose to regard Mackenzie as an embodied Odd Fellows Society, and forthwith addressed him as such:
“My noble king! When first I hear that you married Miss Susan, who is the best daurter I have, an’ when I hear about you from all de people who come back to Jamaica from here—for I can tell you you are well beknown—I say to meself: I will arise an’ never be happy till I see me son-in-law. An’ here I come, though sea-sickness nearly kill me, to welcome you into de fambily; an’ I can tell you at once that I are going to do everything to make you comfortable. We don’t acquainted well yet, but when we are acquaint——”
What would happen when the further acquaintanceship hinted at by Mr. Proudleigh should have developed, will never be known. For just then Mackenzie quietly put a stop to his oratory by remarking:
“So you are Sue’s father? I am glad to see you, sir,” and then shook hands with him.
He greeted Miss Proudleigh and Catherine with similar cordiality, assuring them that he was happy to see them. Then they all sat down.
“Come on a trip, or to do business?” he inquired of Miss Proudleigh, who somehow he took to be the leader of the party.