Don Joaquin did not see the nuns, as did Sarella, with the curtains of the grille drawn back. It seemed to him that the big spikes of the grille were turned the wrong way, for he could not imagine anyone desiring to get forcibly _in_. He watched everything, fully content to take all for granted as the regulation and proper thing, without particularly understanding any of it. It gave him considerable satisfaction to hear that Saint Theresa was a Spaniard, and he thought it sensible of Mariquita to join a Spanish order. He had no misgivings as to her finding the life hard--he did not know in the least what the life was, and made no inquisition; he had a general idea that women did not feel fastings and so forth. He would have felt it very much himself if he had had to rise with the dawn and go fasting till midday, instead of beginning the day with a huge meal of meat. The old life at the range, as it had been when Sarella first came, was never resumed. She was determined that its complete isolation should be changed, and she changed it with wonderful rapidity and success. The friendly and kind-hearted Kanes helped her a great deal. They had insisted, at the wedding itself, that the bride and bridegroom should pay them a very early visit, after their return from their wedding-journey. It was paid immediately on their getting back from California, and it lasted several days. During those days their host and hostess took care that they should meet all the leading Catholics of the place, to whom Sarella made herself pleasant, administering to them (in her husband's disconcerted presence) pressing invitations to come out to the range: though they all had autos it was not to be expected that they would come so far for a cup of tea, and they came for a night, and often for two or three nights. Naturally the Kanes came first and they spoke almost with solemnity (as near solemnity as either could attain) of social duty. It was an obligation on all Catholics to hang together, and hanging together obviously implied frequent mutual hospitalities. Don Joaquin had found that the practice of his religion did imply obligations and duties never realized before, and he was a little confused as to their relative strictness. On the whole, he succumbed to what Sarella intended, with a compliance that might have surprised Mariquita had she been there to see. Some of the cowboys were of the opinion that the old man was breaking. He was only being (not immediately) broken in. A man of little over fifty, of iron constitution, does not "break," however old he may appear to five-and-twenty or thirty. The sign that appeared most ominous to these young men was that "the Boss" betrayed symptoms of less rigid stinginess; there was nothing really alarming about the symptoms. Such as they were they were due, not so much to any decay in the patient's constitution, as to a little awakening of conscience referable, such as it was, to the late-begun practices of confession.