Muriel, now almost released from her early sense of fear, stood still to look at it.
The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together.

Most of them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of the _marae_.

Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned.

"What is it, Mali ?" Muriel whispered, her woman's instinct leading her at once to expect that something special was going on in the way of local festivities.
And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, "All right, Missy Queenie.

Him a wedding, a marriage." The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl, half smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells, emerged slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along the path carpeted with native cloth.