He looked about the yard, seeing nothing. Such scenes he had been familiar with all the days of his life. It was an ordinary Kingston tenement yard; the low range of rooms, each room being separated from the other by but a thin partition of board; the broken-down kitchen; the water-pipe continually dripping, so that a part of the yard was never dry; babies sitting in little boxes stuffed with rags to prevent the little creatures from hurting themselves; bigger babies creeping about; wash-tubs everywhere; it was what he had always seen in every similar place. The prevailing squalor did not affect the old man and his wife, and even Catherine and his youngest daughter had reconciled themselves to it. But Susan rebelled; she felt that she ought not to be reduced to living in a yard-room.
This Sunday morning, however, she was better pleased than usual, for she saw that if her custom continued to increase she would soon be in a position to save money. Up to now she had been living on every penny of her profits, for the rent of the shop and the room together was sixteen shillings a month. But good luck was plainly attending her, and already she was speculating upon what she would do in the future.
Presently she returned to where her father and Catherine were still sitting. Catherine made room for her on the box, and Mr. Proudleigh, never happy if compelled to remain silent for long, asked her when next she expected to hear from Tom.
“How can I tell, sah?” was her very reasonable reply. “Him only write me once since he gone to Colon; an’ I wants to believe he must be in the hospital. From all dat I hear about Colon, Tom don’t likely to get on there. Him too soft! Kingston is all right enough; but in Colon—so I hear—if you look on a man too hard, him wants to shoot you; an’ if you don’t look on him hard, him wants to take an advantage of y’u. That is not the sort o’ place for Tom.”
“Then how you expects to go down to him?” asked her father. “Ef him is such a young man of unreligable nature, I don’t see how you can teck up you’self an’ put you’self under his protection an’ care.”
Susan laughed scornfully. “I was ever under his protection an’ care in Jamaica?” she asked.
“No,” said Catherine; “but here everything is quiet. Down in Colon a young gurl must ’ave a young man to look after ’er; otherwise there may be boderation. I wouldn’t like to go down by meself that way.”
“I would go,” said Susan decisively. “After all, whatever y’u meet in this world it is you’ luck. If you to dead in Colon, you will dead there. If you to come back to Jamaica, y’u will come back.”
This fatalistic note, struck with such confidence, awoke a responsive echo in the hearts of her hearers.
“You is right,” said the old man. “A man shouldn’t bother him head about what goin’ to happen to-morrow, for him can’t prevent what is gwine to happen. Therefore, sufficient to de day is the evil thereof. You saving money to go?”