"I'm almost abnormally healthy and strong, you know, even if I look
thin. I'm the wiry kind."
She sniffed at that, and then said, with a shrug:
"Oh, well, maybe you will escape. I'm sure I wish you better luck than
mine. But one thing's certain: you'll lose that Canadian complexion of
yours all right."
My duties, she said, would be explained to me by Mr. Campbell himself,
though she was going to stay over a day or two to help break me in. My
salary would be ten dollars a week and free board and lodging at the
Myrtle Bank Hotel. I told her of the slighting reception I had received
at the hands of Mr. Campbell, and she said:
"Oh, well, he's a crank. You couldn't please him, no matter what you
did." Then she added: "I don't see, anyhow, why he objected to you.
Brains aren't so much needed in a position like this as legs and a
constitution of iron."
As the day advanced, the heat encroached. Miss Foster sat fanning
herself languidly by the window, looking out with a far-away
expression. I told her about my clothes, and how mortified I was to
find them so different from those of the others on the boat. She said:
"You can have all my clothes, if you want. They won't do for Canada."
That suggested a brilliant solution of my problem of how I was to
secure immediately suitable clothes for Jamaica. I suggested that as
she was going to Canada, she could have mine, and I would take hers.
The proposition seemed to give her a sort of grim amusement. She looked
over my clothes. She took the woolen underwear and heavy, hand-knitted
stockings (that Sung-Sung had made for an older brother, and which had
descended to me after two sisters had had them!), two woolen skirts, my
heavy overcoat, and several other pieces.
She gave me a number of white muslin dresses,--they seemed lovely to
me,--an evening gown with a real low neck, cotton underwear, hose, etc.
I put my hair up for the first time that morning. As I curled it a bit,
this was not difficult to do. I simply rolled it up at the back and
held the chignon in place with four bone hair-pins that she gave me. I
put on one of her white muslin dresses but it was so long for me that
we had to make a wide tuck in it. Then I wore a wide Leghorn hat, the
only trimming of which was a piece of cream-colored mull twisted like a
scarf about the crown.
I asked Miss Foster if I looked all right, and was suitably dressed,
and she said grudgingly:
"Yes, you'll do. You're quite pretty. You'd better look out."
Asked to explain, she merely shrugged her shoulders and said:
"There's only a handful of white women here, you know. We don't count
the tourists. You'll have all you can do to hold the men here at
arm's-length."
This last prospect by no means bothered me. I had the most decided and
instinctive liking for the opposite sex.
The hotel was beautiful, built somewhat in the Spanish style, with a
great inner court, and an arcade that ran under the building. Long
verandas ran out like piers on each side of the court, which was part
of the wonderful garden that extended to the shores of the Caribbean.
The first thing I saw as we came out from our room upon one of the
long-pier verandas was an enormous bird. It was sitting on the branch
of a fantastic and incredibly tall tree that was all trunk, and then
burst into great fan-like foliage at the top. Subsequently I learned
that this was a cocoanut tree.
The proprietor of the hotel, who was dark, smiling, and deferential,
came up to be introduced to me, and I said, meaning to pay a compliment
to his country:
"You have fine-looking birds here."
He looked at me sharply and then snickered, as if he thought I were
joking about something.
"That's a scavenger," he said. "There are hundreds, thousands of them
here in Jamaica. Glad you like them."