The fist unclenched. "No," came the reply, almost in a joyful gasp, "this is for, for godliness only."
"Bless me, no! Two big ones, bigger'n a barrel."
With a parting glance at Demijohn, the guard stole forth to gratify the heathen's whim.
"I'll give him enough to _buy_ a horse," Driscoll resolved.
"A horse and a man Is more than one, And yet not many." --_Taming of the Shrew_.
"Now Berthe--why, what in the world----" Jacqueline began.
It was her second morning to awake in the hacienda house, and the little Bretonne tripped into her room under a starchy mountain heaped high. "Clothes, madame," she replied.
"They were made yesterday by some of the ranchero women. Madame will look?"
There were two dresses, one for each girl. The native seamstresses had slyly taken stock of mademoiselle the day before, only to discover that a "simple" frock from Paris was a formidable thing to duplicate. The marchioness smiled, and the maid also.
"But, for example, Berthe, who inspired this?"
"Oh, the American monsieur, of course! So, monsieur permits himself to observe that I need a wardrobe? But you, Berthe, you surely did not----"
"Oh, no, madame! I knew nothing, till just now, when the woman brought them. The monsieur ordered them yesterday, she said. And naturally, madame, if he could have found better material, I do not doubt----"
"There, child, I'll not be reproached by your even thinking it necessary to defend----"
"And madame will see, too, that they will do nicely." She spread the frocks on the bed, and began snipping here and there with the scissors and taking stitches everywhere. "By letting it out this way--voilà, if madame will kindly slip it on?"
None the less the skirt passed over her head, and the maid's deft fingers kept on busily. "And why not?" she talked as she worked, "unless one likes rags better. And who will see? Only men. Poof, those citizens do not know percale from a Parisian toilette."
Jacqueline began to wax angry with the quiet tyranny of it. She looked at the horror and shuddered, then with both hands pushed the calico to the floor, gathering up her own lawn skirt instead. It was rather a woebegone lawn skirt. She gazed ruefully at the garment, then down at the blue flowering heaped about her ankles. Berthe, kneeling over the dress, raised her eyes. The puckered brow of her mistress spelled fury, and the maid tried not to laugh, at which Jacqueline stamped her foot. "Berthe," she cried, "shall I slap you?"