“Good evening, Mrs. Mackenzie. I hope I see you well? Your husband’s health is propitious, I presume?”
She was equal to the occasion. “Good evening, Mr. Jones. Yes, thank y’u, Mr. Mackenzie is quite well. He would ’ave sent you his compliments if he did know I would meet you.”
She sat down. Their eyes met.
“That don’t matter,” said Jones, most loftily. “Compliments are only words, an’ nobody don’t mean them. I am not sending anybody any compliments. I have no friends, Mrs. Mackenzie, an’ I compliment nobody. A man don’t know who to trust in this world.”
“Quite true, Mr. Jones, quite true,” observed Miss Proudleigh, who had never forgotten Susan’s reception of her at Culebra. “There is but one Friend who we can trust, an’ to Him we can take all our troubles. When man desert us an’ play us false, we can take them to the Lord in pr’yer.” In this way the good lady endeavoured to convey to Jones her opinion of Susan’s general behaviour.
Jones enjoyed Miss Proudleigh’s sympathy. He felt that he was amongst friends. He had helped them with his advice since they had been in Colon, and Mr. Proudleigh had confessed to him that in Mr. Proudleigh’s opinion Mackenzie was not fit to unloose the latchet of Samuel Josiah’s shoe. At that moment Susan was at a disadvantage.
He was looking at her narrowly. Her sojourn at Culebra had improved her: he did not think he had ever seen her look so well before. She was singularly attractive. Dressed in cool white, she faced him self-possessed, while on the third finger of her left hand gleamed a broad band of gold, the symbol of her new condition. Ever and again his eyes lingered on that ring. He hated it. But he determined to show he was indifferent, as indifferent as she appeared to be; in his most bombastic manner he resumed the conversation.
“I am thinkin’ of returning to me native land. The temperature of Panama is deleterious to my constitution, an’ they have no decent administration in the country. Some people, of course, are contented with it. If you kick some people it will please them. But Samuel Josiah Jones is of a different characteristic; besides, I am one of those men who can make a living in me own country, an’ I didn’t come here to pass all me life digging dirt for American people.”
“I don’t suppose anybody else come here fo’ good, either, Mr. Jones,” replied Susan sharply, feeling it incumbent upon her to defend her absent husband against all covert attacks. “I expect meself to go home before long.”
“Is Mac gwine to Jamaica, Sue?” asked her father quickly. “For, ef so, I wouldn’t mind takin’ a trip meself, an’ I could come back wid you.”