Her father noted shrewdly the new expression of grateful pleasure on her face. It seemed to him that Gore was not so incompetent as he had been supposing, to carry on his campaign. Sarella came out and joined them. "What a cunning little pin-cushion!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it just sweet?" The Agnus Dei was almost the only one of Mariquita's new treasures to which she could assign a use.
"Oh, and the necklace! Garnets relieved by those crystal blobs are just the very fashion."
"It is a rosary," Don Joaquin explained in a rather stately tone. It made him uneasy—it must be unlucky—to hear these frivolous eulogies applied to "holy objects" with which personally he had never had the familiarity that diminishes awe.
Mariquita had plenty to do indoors and did not linger. Gore went in also to wash and tidy himself after his immensely long ride.
Sarella, who of course knew long before this where Mariquita had received her education, and had been told whence these pious gifts came, smiled as she turned to Don Joaquin.
"So Gore rode all the way to Denver this time," she remarked.
"It is beyond Denver. Mariquita was pleased to hear news of her old friends."
"Oh, I daresay. Gore is not such a fool as he looks."
"I am not thinking that he looks a fool at all," said Don Joaquin, more stately than ever.
("How Spanish!" thought Sarella, "I suppose they're born solemn.")