ekly went out with the baby.

"I'm very glad you are going to be married, my child," said Tant Sannie,
as she drained the last drop from her coffee cup. "I wouldn't say so
while that boy was here, it would make him too conceited; but marriage
is the finest thing in the world. I've been at it three times, and if it
pleased God to take this husband from me I should have another. There's
nothing like it, my child; nothing."

"Perhaps it might not suit all people, at all times, as well as it suits
you, Tant Sannie," said Em. There was a little shade of weariness in the
voice.

"Not suit every one!" said Tant Sannie. "If the beloved Redeemer didn't
mean men to have wives what did He make women for? That's what I say.
If a woman's old enough to marry, and doesn't, she's sinning against the
Lord--it's a wanting to know better than Him. What, does she think the
Lord took all that trouble in making her for nothing? It's evident He
wants babies, otherwise why does He send them? Not that I've done much
in that way myself," said Tant Sannie, sorrowfully; "but I've done my
best."

She rose with some difficulty from her chair, and began moving slowly
toward the door.

"It's a strange thing," she said, "but you can't love a man till you've
had a baby by him. Now there's that boy there, when we were first
married if he only sneezed in the night I boxed his ears; now if he lets
his pipe-ash come on my milk-cloths I don't think of laying a finger
on him. There's nothing like being married," said Tant Sannie, as she
puffed toward the door. "If a woman's got a baby and a husband she's
got the best things the Lord can give her; if only the baby doesn't have
convulsions. As for a husband, it's very much the same who one has. Some
men are fat, and some men are thin; some men drink brandy, and some men
drink gin; but it all comes to the same thing in the end; it's all one.
A man's a man, you know."

Here they came upon Gregory, who was sitting in the shade before the
house. Tant Sannie shook hands with him.

"I'm glad you're going to get married," she said. "I hope you'll have as
many children in five years as a cow has calves, and more too. I think
I'll just go and have a look at your soap-pot before I start," she said,
turning to Em. "Not that I believe in this new plan of putting soda
in the pot. If the dear Father had meant soda to be put into soap what
would He have made milk-bushes for, and stuck them all over the veld as
thick