A different life showed itself in the front of the house, where Tant’ Sannie’s cart stood ready inspanned, and the Boer-woman herself sat in the front room drinking coffee. She had come to visit her step-daughter, probably for the last time, as she now weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, and was not easily able to move. On a chair sat her mild young husband nursing the baby — a pudding-faced, weak-eyed child.

“You take it and get into the cart with it,” said Tant’ Sannie. “What do you want here, listening to our woman’s talk?”

The young man arose, and meekly 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 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 as lambs in the lambing season?”