"What's that to do with it?"
"And better for Miss Mariquita. It's too much for Miss Mariquita—all the work she has to do."
"That's true anyway."
"Of course it's true. Anyone can see that." (That Sarella saw it, considerably surprised Jack, and provided matter for some close consideration subsequently.)
"Look here, Jack," she went on, "I'll tell you what. You go to Mr. Xeres and say you'd like your daughter to come and work for you...."
"And he'd tell me to go and be damned."
"But you'd not go. And he wouldn't want you to go. And I'll speak to him."
Jack stared again. He hardly realized yet how much steadily growing confidence in her influence with "the Boss" Sarella felt. He made no promise to speak to him: but said "he'd sleep on it."
With that sleep came a certain ray of comprehension. Miss Sarella was not thinking entirely of him and his loneliness, nor entirely of Miss Mariquita. He believed that she really expected the Boss would marry her (as all the cowboys had believed for some weeks) and he perceived, with some involuntary admiration of her shrewdness, that she had no idea of being left, if Miss Mariquita should marry and go away, to do all the work as she had done. Once arrived at this perception of the situation, Jack went ahead confident of Sarella's quietly persistent help. He had not the least dread of rough language. He had no sensitive dread of displeasing his master. He would like to have Ginger up at the range especially as Ginger's coming would take much of the work off Miss Mariquita's hands. He even made Don Joaquin suspect that if Ginger were not allowed to come he, Jack, would go, and make a home for her down in Maxwell.
It did not suit Don Joaquin to lose Jack, and it suited him very well to listen to Sarella.