s quite time for you to be married," and he
came, looking very pale, and walking unsteadily as though he had been
drinking, while after him, as usual, marched Jan, still pulling at the
pipe which he had forgotten to take out of his mouth.

Somehow I do not recollect much of the details of that wedding; they
seem to have slipped my mind, or perhaps they are buried beneath the
memories of all that followed hard upon it. I remember Suzanne standing
before the little table, behind which was the _predicant_ with his book.
She wore a white dress that fitted her very well, but had no veil
upon her head after the English fashion, which even Boer girls follow
nowadays, only in her hand she carried a bunch of rare white flowers
that Sihamba had gathered for her in a hidden kloof where they grew.
Her face was somewhat pale, or looked so in the dim room, but her lips
showed red like coral, and her dark eyes glowed and shone as she turned
them upon the lover at her side, the fair-haired, grey-eyed, handsome
English lad, whose noble blood told its tale in every feature and
movement, yes, and even in his voice, the man whom she had saved from
death to be her life-mate.

A few whispered words, the changing of a ring, and one long kiss, and
these two, Ralph Kenzie and Suzanne Botmar, were husband and wife in the
eyes of God and man. Ah! me, I am glad to think of it, for in the end,
of all the many marriages that I have known, this proved the very best
and happiest.

Now I thought that it was done with, for they had knelt down and the
_predicant_ had blessed them; but not so, for the good man must have his
word, and a long word it was. On and on he preached about the duties of
husbands and wives, and many other matters, till at last, as I expected,
he came to the children. Now I could bear it no longer.

"That is enough, reverend Sir," I said, "for surely it is scarcely
needful to talk of children to people who have not been married five
minutes."

That pricked the bladder of his discourse, which soon came to an end,
whereon I called to the Kaffirs to bring in dinner.

The food was good and plentiful, and so was the Hollands, or Squareface
as they call it now, to say nothing of the Constantia and peach-brandy
which had been sent to me many years before by a cousin who lived at
Stellenbosch; and yet that meal was not as cheerful as it might have
been. To begin with, the _predicant_ was sulky because I had cut him
short in his addre