"Who's to do the work here while she's away?" grumbled Don Joaquin. "It will have to be done when she's gone for good. We may just as well think it out." Sarella was quite resolved that she would never be the slave Mariquita had been, and did not mind having the struggle, if there was to be one, now. "Whether Mariquita married or became a nun," she went on, "she would be gone from here. Her place would have to be supplied--more than supplied, for a young wife like me could not do nearly so much work. I should have things to do an unmarried girl has not, and be unfit for much work. I am sure you understand that. Sister Aquinas knows two sisters, very respectable and trustworthy, steady, and not too young. I meant to speak to you about them. They would suit us as well. They will not separate, and for that matter, we can't do with less than two." Sarella's great object was to open the matter; she intended to succeed but did not count on instant success, or success without a struggle. Don Joaquin had to be familiarized with a scheme some time before he would adopt it. He rebelled at first and for that rebellion she punished him. "Mariquita's position was wrong," she told him boldly. "It tended to make her unlike other girls and give her unusual ideas. She was tied by the leg here, by too much work, and her only rest or recreation was solitary thinking. If she had been taken about and met her equals she would have been like other girls, I expect. She was a slave and sought her freedom in the skies." Don Joaquin enjoyed this philippic very little; perhaps he only partly understood it, but he did understand that Sarella thought Mariquita had been put upon and did not intend being put upon herself. He would have been much less influenced if he had thought of Sarella as specially devoted to his daughter or blindly fond of her, but he had always believed that there was but a cool sympathy between the two girls, and that Sarella would have found fault with Mariquita quite willingly if there had been fault to find. "You have taken up the cudgels," he said sourly, "very strongly for Mariquita of late." "As time goes on I naturally feel able to speak more plainly than I could when I first came here. I was only your guest. It is different 'of late.' And I am 'taking up the cudgels' for myself more than for Mariquita." "Oh, I quite see that," he retorted with a savage grin. Sarella determined to hit back, and she was by no means restrained by scruples as to "hitting below the belt."