"Ho, ho!" I thought to myself, "that will be Miss Dash, I presume, whom the Blanks expected to visit them. And who is the fellow, I wonder!"

So I rode quickly after them, coming up without attracting attention, my horse's unshod hoofs making scarcely any noise on the soft road. To my amazement, the amorous pair turned out to be Henere Tangiao, a half-breed, who had been the foreman of a gang of native labourers I had lately discharged; and his fair companion was his very recent bride, formerly Miss Mata Akepiro.

They greeted me with great cordiality, only a little overcome by self-consciousness of their "store-clothes," that had been donned to do honour to some settlers they had been to visit. Said Mrs. Tangiao to me, showing her pretty teeth, and with only a little more Maori accent than I am able to reproduce—

"You come see our house, Mitta Hay; you come see old Maori kainga at Matapa? You come plenty plenty soon, good!"

I accepted the invitation, and did go some days after that. The house was a little wooden cottage, built outside the enclosed kainga of raupo wharè, or reed-grass cabins, of the rest of the tribe. It was a wharè Pakeha, built by Henere in right of the admixture of English blood in his veins, and not, I truly believe, from any preference for that style of building over the old Maori kind.

There was no one about when I arrived, so I walked through the two rooms and out at the back. The rooms were furnished with a few tables and chairs and other things, much after the style of married settlers in a small way. Out behind the house was an open space, where a fire was burning, with a billy boiling upon it. Close to the fire, superintending the cooking, her hair hanging in elf-locks round her head and over her face, squatting on the ground with her chin on her knees, a pipe in her mouth, and a dirty blanket over her shoulders as her only garment, was Mrs. Tangiao, the lady of the riding-habit.

Naturally, you would suppose that such an elegant and civilized young bride would blush with shame and dismay at being discovered by me in such utter déshabillé. Not a bit of it! Up she jumped, all smiles and welcomes, her blanket falling off as she did so, and leaving her as naked as a mahogany Venus. Even this did not discompose her in the least, as she warmly shook hands with me, and with truly childlike innocence offered her lips for a fraternal salute.

But the most comical part of the whole affair is yet to be told. A hearty coo-ee or two brought up Henere, who was at work in his cultivation at no great distance. After he had shaken me by the hand and warmly welcomed me, he began to scold the unlucky Mata. Not on the score of indelicacy or indecency, though; no such thought as that crossed his brain, good easy man! He only reproved his wife for not showing sufficient and proper honour to her "rangatira Pakeha" guest, which could not be done, he considered, unless she were completely attired in full Pakeha costume.

So, while I sat on the verandah and sipped some tea, Henere commenced to dress up his bride before my very eyes. He put on and fastened every article of her best clothes, combed and brushed out her redundant hair, decked and ornamented her with all the ribbons and laces and so on of which her wardrobe could boast. Meanwhile, the lady remained quite passive under his hands, sitting or standing or turning about as required, but all the while with serious unmoved expression of face, and puckered-up lips. Her large wondering eyes she kept fixed intently upon me, to note the effect the processes of her toilette were having upon me. I was very nearly strangled with suppressed laughter, but it would have mortally offended these simple, earnest people to have shown the least sense of the ridiculous.