“It don’t matter how I look,” said Jones angrily: “it’s how I feel. If it wasn’t for one thing, I would throw meself in the sea this very night.”
“That would not be Christianlike, Mister Jones,” said Miss Proudleigh, who had been listening attentively to the conversation. “We must patiently bear our crosses. Besides, I don’t see what you worrying you’self about, for there is some things that is a good riddance. Y’u don’t see it now, but you will see it later on.”
“That may be true, but I am speaking of now an’ not of later on,” said Jones. “I want you all to understand that I have been driven like a lamb to the slaughter by Susan Mackenzie. She get married without my knowledge; she took away all the money I give her, an’ what she used to take from me when she thought I didn’t know; an’ now she is living like a king at Culebra. If it wasn’t for me she might have been in Jamaica to-day keeping a little shop, without an extra five shillin’s. Yet when I send her sister to ask her——”
“What y’u going to say now?” cried Catherine, seeing he was on the verge of blurting out what he had agreed should be kept a secret.
“What I am going to say I am going to say,” replied Jones impetuously. “I am goin’ away to Jamaica, an’ I send an’ ask Susan to come an’ tell me good-bye and have a talk before I go. What she do? She say she can’t come! Is that a decent way to treat a man, especially a man like me? When she left me I bear it in silence, though I might have been very disagreeable. Yet now she treat me like if I was a dog!”
This angry outburst was received in silence by those who heard it. They had never seen Jones in a temper before.
“You know what I am going to do now?” he asked after a moment’s pause. “I am going straight up to Culebra to tell Susan what I think of her!”
“Y’u can’t do that at all, Mr. Jones,” said Catherine firmly. “I told you already why Sue can’t come now, an’ you must remember she is married an’ dat her husband wouldn’t like y’u to bring no confusion into his house.”
“Her husband can go to the devil!” exclaimed Jones. “Who is her husband?”
“But suppose him meet you an’ have a fight?” said Mr. Proudleigh, thinking that such a prospect might have a deterrent effect upon Jones.