Don Joaquin consented, and Sarella thought she would go and deliver Mariquita's message to Jack and his daughter. She found them together and began by saying, smilingly:
"I expect you have known for a long while that there was a marriage in the air?"
Old Jack had not learned to like her, and Ginger still disliked her smile.
"I don't believe," she said perversely, for, of course, both she and her father understood perfectly, "that Miss Mariquita is going to be married. She's not that way."
This was a discouraging opening, for it seemed to cast a sort of slur on young women who were likely to be married.
"Mr. Gore's never asked again!" cried Jack.
"Dad, don't you be silly," Ginger suggested; "everyone knows Miss Mariquita wants to be a nun."
"Yes," said Sarella with impregnable amiability, "but we can't all be nuns. Miss Mariquita doesn't seem to think you likely to be one. She sent me back by her father such a nice letter. She sends Jack and you her love, and, though she doesn't send Larry Burke her love, thinking of you evidently makes her think of him."
Ginger visibly relaxed, and her father stared appallingly with his one eye.
"Good Lord!" quoth he in more sincere than flattering astonishment.