He gave them at some length--more length than perspicuity.

I knew nothing about oats, save that they were employed in the manufacture of porridge--which I detest; but I was to be near Hilda once more, and I was prepared to undertake the superintendence of the oat from its birth to its reaping if only I might be allowed to live so close to Hilda.
The farmer and his wife were Boers, but they spoke English.

Mr.Jan Willem Klaas himself was a fine specimen of the breed--tall, erect, broad-shouldered, and genial.

Mrs.Klaas, his wife, was mainly suggestive, in mind and person, of suet-pudding.

There was one prattling little girl of three years old, by name Sannie, a most engaging child; and also a chubby baby.
"You are betrothed, of course ?" Mrs.Klaas said to Hilda before me, with the curious tactlessness of her race, when we made our first arrangement.
Hilda's face flushed.