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.