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 address, and a holy man in the sulks is a bad kind of animal to deal with.

Then Jan tried to propose the health of the new married pair and could not do it.