Sarella laughed and expressed her belief that after all Jack's embassy was rather superfluous.
"Maybe so. But I knew he'd hate it, and he deserved it for seeming so unbelieving. If my mother had been lovely I'd have been born plain; it's not him as should think me too ugly for any young fellow to fancy. I daresay I shouldn't have decided to take Larry if Miss Mariquita hadn't sent that message. I was afraid she'd think me a fool. Here's Larry coming round the corner, looking as if he'd been stealing his mother's sugar."
"He's only thinking of your pastry," said Sarella. "I'll slip off. May I be told when it's all settled?"
"Yes, certainly, Miss Sarella, and I'm sure I wish all that's best to the Boss and yourself. It's not everyone could manage him, but you will. Poor Miss Mariquita never could. She was too good."
With these mixed compliments Sarella had to content herself.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
When she answered Mariquita's letter she was to report not only the judicial end of the plumiverous and specked hens, but the betrothal of Larry Burke and Ginger. "Nothing," she wrote, "but his dread of your displeasure could have overcome his dread of what the other cowboys would say on hearing of his proposing. After all, he has more sense than some sharp fellows who follow at last the advice they know is worth least...."
In her next letter Sarella said:
"I am to be made a Catholic on Monday next; so when you're saying your prayers (and that's all day) you can be thinking of me. Perhaps I gave in to it first to satisfy your father; but even then I thought 'if it makes me a bit more like Mariquita he'll get a better bargain in me.' I shan't ever be at all like you, but I shall be of the same Religion as you, and I know by this time that it will do me good. It's all a bit too big for me to understand, but I like what I do understand, and Sister Aquinas says I shall grow into it. Clothes, she says, fit better when they're worn a bit, and sit easier. She says, 'It has changed you, my dear child, already; you are gentler, and kinder.' She said another thing, 'Your husband has been a Catholic all his life, but you will gradually make him a better one. He is a very sensible man, and he can't see you learning to be a Catholic and not want to learn what it really means himself. He is too honest.' She likes your father a lot, and never bothers him. 'I know,' she said, 'you will not bother him either. Some earnest Catholics do bother their men-folks terribly about religious things—and for all the good they seem to do, might be only half as earnest and have a better effect.' I make my First Communion the day after I'm received. And, Mariquita, my dear, we are to be married that day week. Your father will fetch you home, and mind, mind, you come. I should never forgive you if you didn't. Shall I have Ginger for a bridesmaid? I know some brides do choose ugly ones to make themselves look better. The cowboys (this is a dead secret told me by Ginger) have subscribed to give us a wedding-present. I hope it won't be one of those clocks like black-marble monuments with a round gilt eye in it. I expect the cowboys laugh at both these marriages. But they rather like them. They make a lark, and they never do dislike anything they can laugh at. They certainly all look twice as amiably at me when we meet about the place since they knew I was going to be married. And Ginger finds them so friendly and pleasant I expect she thinks she might, if she had liked, have married the lot. But that's different. I daresay you notice that I write more cheerfully, now it is settled. Yes, I do. I like him a great deal more than at first. It began when he gave in about what you wanted. I really believe I shall make him happy—and I fancy I think of that more—I mean less of his making me happy. And, Mariquita, it is good of me to have wanted you to be let alone to be a nun if you thought it right, because, oh dear, how I should like you to be living near or at the next range! Before I got to know you, it was just the opposite. I hoped you'd get a husband of your own and quit; I did. I thought you'd hate your father marrying again, and (if you stayed on here) would be looking disapproval all day long, and perhaps I thought you would not be best pleased at not getting all his money when he died. (I think when people go to Confession they ought to confess things like that. Do they?) Oh, Mariquita, you will be missed. But I'd rather miss you, and know you were being what you felt yourself called away to, than think I had helped to have you interfered with...."