Sarella found considerable enjoyment in the visits to Maxwell
necessitated by her period of instruction. Each instruction was of
reasonable length and left plenty of time for other affairs, and that
time landed Don Joaquin in expenses he had been far from foreseeing.
Sarella had a fund of mild obstinacy which her placidity of temper
partly veiled. She intended that considerable additions to the furniture
of the homestead should be made, and she did _not_ intend to get married
without some considerable additions to her wardrobe as well. Her
dresses, she assured Don Joaquin, were all too youthful. "Girl's
clothes" she called them. She insisted on the necessity of now dressing
as a matron. "Perhaps," she admitted with sweet ingenuousness, "I have
dressed too young. One gets into a sort of groove. There was nothing to
remind me that I had passed beyond the stage of school-girl frocks. But
a married woman, unless she is a silly, must pull herself up, and adopt
a matron's style; I would rather now dress a bit too old than too young.
You don't want people to be saying you have married a flapper!"
She got her own way, and Don Joaquin, had he known anything about it,
might have discovered that matronly garments were more expensive than a
girl's. "A girl," Sarella informed Mariquita, "need only be smart. A
matron's dress must be handsome."
To do her justice, Sarella tried to convince her lover that Mariquita
also should be provided with new clothes; but he would agree only to one
new "suit," as he called it, for his daughter to wear at his wedding. He
had no idea of spending his own money on an extensive outfit "for
another man's wife." That expense would be Gore's. Even in Sarella's
case he would never have agreed to buy all she wanted had it been
announced at once, but she was far too astute for any such mistake as
that. It appeared that there must be some delay before their marriage,
and she utilized it by spreading her gradual demands over as long a time
as she could.
Some of the expense, too, Don Joaquin managed to reduce by discovering a
market he had hardly thought of till now, for the furs of animals he had
himself shot; some of these animals were rather uncommon, some even
rare, and he became aware of their commercial value only when bargaining
for their making up into coats or cloaks for Sarella. His subsequent
visits to this "store" in order to dispose of similar furs against a
reduction in its charges for Sarella's clothing, he studiously concealed
from her, but Sarella knew all about it.
"Why," she said to herself, really admiring his sharpness, "the old boy
is making a _profit_ on the bargain. He's getting more for his furs than
he's spending."
She was careful not to let him guess that she knew this; but she
promised herself to "take it out in furniture." And she kept her
promise. It was Sarella's principle that a person who did not keep
promises made to herself would never keep those made to other people.
"You really must," she told him, "have some of those furs made into a
handsome winter jacket for Mariquita. They cost you nothing, and she
must have a winter jacket. The one she has was got at the Convent--and a
present, too, I believe. It was handsome once--and that shows how
economical _good_ clothes are; they last so--"
(Don Joaquin thought, "especially economical when they are presents.")
"--But Mariquita has grown out of it. She is so tall. A new one made of
cloth from the store would cost more than one for me, because she is so
tall. But those furs cost you nothing."
She knew he would not say, "No, but I can sell them."
"Besides," she added, "if you offered them some more furs at the store
they might take something off the charge of making and lining. It is
often done. I'll ask them about it if you like."
Don Joaquin did not at all desire her to do that.
"No necessity," he said hastily; "Mariquita shall have the jacket. I
will take the furs and give the order myself."
"Only be sure to insist that the lining is silk. They have some silvery
gray silk that would just go with those furs. And Mariquita would _pay_
good dressing. Her style wants it. She's solid, you know."
Mariquita did get the jacket. But it was not of the fur Sarella had
meant--her father knew by that time the value of that sort of fur. And
Sarella knew that she had made it quite clear which sort she had asked
him to supply. She was amused by his craftiness, and though a little
ashamed of him, she was readier to forgive his stinginess than if it had
been illustrated in a garment for herself. After all, it was perhaps as
well that Mariquita's should not be so valuable as her own.
"And married women," she reminded herself, "do have to dress handsomer
than girls. And Mariquita will never know the difference."
"_I_ suggested," she told her cousin, "the same gray fur as mine. But I
daresay a brown fur will suit your coloring better, and it's _younger_.
Anything gray (in the fur line) can be worn with mourning, and nothing's
so elderly as mourning."
It was the first present her father had ever given Mariquita, and she
thanked him with a warmth of gratefulness that ought to have made him
ashamed. But Don Joaquin was not subject to the unpleasant consciousness
of shame. On the contrary, he thought with less complacence of
Mariquita's thanks than of the fact that he had given her a necessary
winter garment at a profit--for he had taken the other furs to the store
and received for them a substantial cash payment over and above the
clearing of the charges for making up and lining the commoner skins of
which the winter jacket was made.
"I wonder," thought Sarella, "what that lining is? It looks silky, but
I'm sure it isn't silk. I daresay it's warmer. And after all, Gore can
get it changed for silk when it's worn out; the fur will outlast two
linings at least. It's not so delicate as mine. I'm afraid mine'll
_flatten_. I must look to that."