d with a rush through the door.

"I told you so! I knew it!" said Tant Sannie. "The dear Lord doesn't
send dreams for nothing. Didn't I tell you this morning that I dreamed
of a great beast like a sheep, with red eyes, and I killed it? Wasn't
the white wool his hair, and the red eyes his weak eyes, and my killing
him meant marriage? Get supper ready quickly; the sheep's inside and
roaster-cakes. We shall sit up tonight."

To young Piet Vander Walt that supper was a period of intense torture.
There was something overawing in that assembly of English people, with
their incomprehensible speech; and moreover, it was his first courtship;
his first wife had courted him, and ten months of severe domestic rule
had not raised his spirit nor courage. He ate little, and when he
raised a morsel to his lips glanced guiltily round to see if he were
not observed. He had put three rings on his little finger, with the
intention of sticking it out stiffly when he raised a coffee-cup; now
the little finger was curled miserably among its fellows. It was small
relief when the meal was over, and Tant Sannie and he repaired to the
front room. Once seated there, he set his knees close together, stood
his black hat upon them, and wretchedly turned the brim up and down.
But supper had cheered Tant Sannie, who found it impossible longer to
maintain that decorous silence, and whose heart yearned over the youth.

"I was related to your aunt Selena who died," said Tant Sannie. "My
mother's stepbrother's child was married to her father's brother's
stepnephew's niece."

"Yes, aunt," said the young man, "I know we were related."

"It was her cousin," said Tant Sannie, now fairly on the flow, "who had
the cancer cut out of her breast by the other doctor, who was not the
right doctor they sent for, but who did it quite as well."

"Yes, aunt," said the young man.

"I've heard about it often," said Tant Sannie. "And he was the son of
the old doctor that they say died on Christmas-day, but I don't know
if that's true. People do tell such awful lies. Why should he die on
Christmas-day more than any other day?"

"Yes, aunt, why?" said the young man meekly.

"Did you ever have the toothache?" asked Tant Sannie.

"No, aunt."

"Well, they say that doctor--not the son of the old doctor that died on
Christmas-day, the other that didn't come when he was sent for--he gave
such good stuff for the toothache that if you opened the bottle in the
room where