When he was fourteen years old, and Zaida was twelve, they were married. Madame Van der Veen furnished cake and lemonade for the wedding, and gave gay dresses to the juvenile bride and bridegroom, who looked extremely well in their new finery. Jan had lost something of his childish beauty, but he was still handsome. His yellow complexion was rendered paler by the contrast of his jet black hair and the bright turban that surmounted it. His limbs were slender and flexible, his features small and well proportioned, and his large antelope eyes had a floating, plaintive expression, as if there was always a tear in his soul. Zaida was rounder, and browner, and ruddier. Her dark hair was combed entirely back, and twisted into a knot, ornamented with scarlet flowers. The short downy hairs about the forehead curled themselves into a little wavy fringe. From her small ears were suspended two large gilded hoops, a bridal present from the old Englishman. From her Arab father she inherited eyes more beautifully formed than belonged to her mother’s race. The long dark lashes curled upward, and imparted a smiling expression, even in her most serious moments; and when she was amused, her eyes laughed outright. There was a harmonized contrast between her and her bridegroom, which was extremely agreeable. The young Englishman compared them to the major and minor mode; and Madame Van der Veen said they looked like hope and memory. Personal comeliness is rare among the natives of those islands. Little Zaida was like a ruby among pudding-stones. A bamboo hut, raised two feet from the ground, and consisting of two apartments, without windows, was their bridal home. It was all they needed in a climate where, more than half the year, all household occupations could be most conveniently performed out of doors. There was a broad verandah in front, sheltered from rain and sun by the projecting roof. In front was a grove of orange and lemon trees, and in the rear was a group of plantains, whose immensely long broad leaves and yellow spikes of nodding flowers cast refreshing shadows. A grass mat, of Jan’s own weaving, and pillows filled with a kind of silky down from a wild plant, answered for a bed. Gourd shells, a few earthern dishes, and a wooden waiter from which they ate their meals, seated on the floor, constituted their simple furniture. The rooms, which received light from the open door, were used only for eating and sleeping. The verandah was the place where all their sedentary occupations were pursued. There, Zaida might be seen busy at her spinning-wheel and loom; there, Jan wove mats and baskets for his master’s household; and there stood his gambang, a musical instrument, with wooden bars of graduated lengths, which he struck with a mallet, to accompany the simple Javanese melodies that he and Zaida were accustomed to sing together.