She was to sail on Saturday, so on Friday night quite a number of her friends came to see her. She had specially invited them; for though, the exigencies of space forbidding, she could not give a dance, she had heard that rich people had “at homes,” and she saw no good reason why she should not have one herself. She did not call it an “at home”; she merely told her friends it was to be “a joke”; but she meant it to be a very serious and fashionable joke, which was what she conceived an “at home” to be.
Letitia was there, and Cordelia Sampson, a reddish-brown young lady, very much freckled, and with a voice of astonishing shrillness. Cordelia sang in the choir of an Episcopalian mission church in one of the suburbs of the city, always spoke of herself as “a choir,” and was always alluded to as “a choir” by those who knew her. She was the terror of the mild-mannered clergyman who, for some utterly inexplicable reason, believed that she was endowed with a splendid voice, and that her resignation, so frequently threatened, would mean a great loss to the church. You sometimes had to persuade her to sing when she came to see you; but, once she began, the problem was how to persuade her to stop. She was clothed in pink this evening, and was aggressively prepared to be musical; in fact, she had brought a music folio with her, and she sat with it in her lap, so as to be ready for all emergencies. There were four other girls, two of them black, and the other two of the dark brown shade known as sambo. All of these were dressed in light white frocks which fitted them to perfection. No men had been invited, except Letitia’s brother; for Susan did not think highly of the few young men she knew.
The cloth partition in the room had been taken down, and the beds removed. Some chairs had been borrowed from the people in the yard, who, since they had heard of Susan’s good fortune, treated her with marked respect and never neglected to address her as Miss Susan. There was therefore room for the guests, who, if they did sit rather close to one another, and perspired profusely, did not seem to mind that much. As for refreshments, Susan had laid out eight shillings in cakes, aerated waters and syrups, being determined that no one should call her mean. She was expecting Samuel; but he, she told her friends, might not come until nine o’clock.
There was but one thing to talk about, of course.
“I may ’ave to sing at you’ wedding, Sue,” said Miss Sampson. “For if a young man can fall in love with a young lady at first sight, an’ take ’er away with ’im, it is likely he may marry ’er.”
“I believe so!” said Letitia. “The moment I saw Sue an’ Jones together, I know ’im love ’er. Y’u should see the way him look on ’er. Sort of funny, y’u know . . . in fact, you could see love all over his face.”
“Well,” said Susan complacently, “if it’s my luck to married, I will married. But I not putting me head on that. After all, a lot of people married an’ don’t better off than me to-day; so ef I don’t married I won’t fret.”
“Y’u right, me child,” said Letitia. “What’s de good of getting married if you ’ave to work ’ard? I know some married woman that toils like a slave from morning to night, an’ I don’t see what them get for it. That wouldn’t suit me!”
“Nor me,” observed one of the other girls. “What any woman going to kill herself for?”
“But I say, Sue,” she went on, inadvertently turning the conversation; “y’u ever hear anything about that gurl y’u brought up in de court-house? I never see y’u since dat time, an’ I wanted to ask you about ’er.”