Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/68

40 the less he liked her. Then he glanced at the dour old uncle, and cast his helpless eyes around the crowded meeting-house. The men were glum and scowling; one or two of the young girls seemed to perceive the humour of the situation, for they giggled, and then hid their faces in their shawls.

Bent eyed his prospective uncle-in-law again. The old man was impatient. He said again, "Take my niece as your wife."

"Ae," assented the white man, who could see no hope of escape. "I'll take her."

So the young soldier was mated, to the satisfaction of every one but himself. "She wasn't my fancy, to put it mildly," he says. "But I suppose it was her last chance, and the old man would have tomahawked me if I hadn't taken her."

Mrs. Bent's wedding-furnishings, which she bundled a little later, with determined air, into the corner of the communal house assigned to the white man, were spartan and primitive in the extreme.

They consisted solely of a large plaited whariki (sleeping-mat) and a wooden pillow, which, to the white man, seemed alarmingly like some weapon of chastisement.

Matrimony amongst the Hauhaus was simplicity itself.

Bent, now fully received into the tribe, had a Maori name given to him. It was "Ringiringi," a name he bore for two or three years, until the