“Well!” she said, “you see me luck don’t desert me! I did think I would ’ave to work an’ save before I could go away; an’ before I save a shillin’ I get a friend to take me.”
“An’ you remember, Sue,” said her father, “that it was me who strongly advise y’u to go to de picnic. I had a sort of feeling that you should go. Something say to me, ‘Make her go.’ I am a man who follow me feeling all de time; an’ p’rhaps if I didn’t do it, you wouldn’t have gotted such a chance to go foreign.
“Well, nobody can say I don’t do me best fo’ me children,” he proceeded, in a self-satisfied tone. “An’ if them should forget me, the curse of God must fall on them. All night long I lay down and thinks about them. When you believe I are sleeping I am thinking about you.”
If snoring be a proof of wakefulness, then it must be admitted that Mr. Proudleigh spent all the long hours of the night in anxiously reflecting on his children’s future welfare. In fact, on the strength of such evidence, it might reasonably be contended that he never knew what it was to sleep. On the other hand, it was difficult to reconcile his claims to habitual insomnia with his habit of frequent dreaming; for every morning he had at least one dream to relate, and nearly every dream of his was fraught with prophetic meaning.
That he should now be anxious to bind his children, and especially Susan, to him by the bonds of gratitude was natural. And the reason was obvious. If Susan went to Panama and did not take the others with her, or agree to send something regularly for them, the prospects of himself and the old woman might again become serious, however it should fare with the two girls. In mentioning the vengeance of God upon ungrateful children, therefore, he felt he had struck a note that would vibrate to good effect, and inwardly congratulated himself on his diplomacy. Susan, however, did not need to be reminded of the necessity of doing something for her people before she left; she had already made up her mind as to that while driving home from the railway station. So by way of answer to her father’s remarks, she began to tell them of her plans.
“I can’t take Kate wid me again, as I was goin’ to do if I did go by meself,” she explained. “An’ I can’t promise to send for any of you, for Sam not going to like it. If Kate can manage to come to Colon by herself, after I get down there, dat will be all right, for I would like some of me own family near me. But I not sending for her. And I don’t see what you would do in Colon, sah,” she went on, turning to her father, “for you’re old, an’ you can’t work.”
“Me!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh indignantly; but Susan calmly continued with her statement, without taking any notice of his protest, or giving him the opportunity of showing how extremely useful just such a man as he would be in a country devoted to the strenuous task of building a great canal.
“I am going to leave the shop, an’ all of you can look after it, same as if I was in Jamaica. It getting on well, an’ if you don’t act foolish you will make a profit every week. An’ I will send something for y’u whenever I can. And see here! Remember that I don’t want nobody to talk about Tom when Sam come to see me. Aunt Deborah nearly do it a little while ago when Sam was here, an’ it is all that sort of stupidness I don’t like.”
“You needn’t express you’self in that way, Susan,” protested Miss Proudleigh severely. “I didn’t mean anyt’ing. It only occur to me that Jones might meet Tom, an’ Tom might make confusion.”
“Him make confusion!” retorted Susan scornfully. “What about? What him send for me since him gone away? I only hear from him once, an’ him say that if he don’t get sick him will send for me; an’ he didn’t even put a dollar in de letter. It’s two months now since him gone. If I didn’t look for meself I might have been dead by this time. Besides, after all, I am me own woman, an’ if I choose to get another intended, that’s my business!”