“You right, Mr. Mac,” she said sharply. “If people did mind them own business, an’ didn’t go out gamblin’ every night, it would ’elp them better than interfering wid what don’t concern them. All that Jamaica people know to do is to say that the Americans don’t treat them good. Then what them come here for? If you know you goin’ to find fault, you better stay home. I don’t want to go where the American people don’t want me. If I was in me own country it would be different; but I am foreign, an’ I can’t expect everything me own way.”
Mackenzie looked pleased when he heard his opinions thus openly appreciated. Jones looked still more disdainful.
“There is no accounting for diverse tastes,” he remarked loftily. “I read one time in a book that if you bray a pig in a motor he will return to his wallow, and though present company is always exceptional I must beg to convey my entire dissension from the opinions that present company have expressed. These Americans are a rude set of men, an’ I don’t temporize with them. But, of course, if some people like to be treated like a dog, they can continue to put up with it.”
Mackenzie frowned and would have answered, but Susan was before him.
“You goin’ to be rude to Mr. Mac now, after all his kindness to us?” she asked tartly, and Jones, who guessed that Mackenzie, for all his placid exterior, was a man who could not be insulted with impunity, denied that he had any such intention. He informed Susan that he had known Mackenzie for years, whereas she had only known him for months, and that he would not allow any female to suggest that he could think of insulting so firm and tried a friend as Mac. Susan was satisfied with this speech, and Mackenzie was glad not to be compelled to take offence. He did not want his friendship with Susan and her lover to end abruptly. A few minutes afterwards the two men went out quite amicably together.
On another occasion—Jones had now been four months in Panama—he complained of the difficulty which every one experienced of saving money in that country.
“You can save if you really want to,” was Mackenzie’s reply. “I know plenty of men who send money home to Jamaica regular. Some things is dear, but if you are economical you don’t need to buy dear things all the time.”
“You are warm you’self, eh, Mr. Mac?” asked Susan, who had a great respect for the power of money, and no little curiosity concerning those who possessed it.
“So-so,” he replied, smiling. “I save a little when I was in Jamaica, an’ I been working steady in the Zone for about four years. Them pay me pretty well, an’ I don’t spend all I earn.”
“I don’t believe in living mean,” was Jones’s remark, which he strove to make appear as a statement applicable only to himself and his inclinations, but which Mackenzie knew was intended as a reflection on the disposition and habits of John Mackenzie. On this occasion, too, Susan took him up sharply.