Left alone in that terrific orphanhood, they had clung
together, supporting one another and their little sisters, and
developing unknown powers in the stress of new necessity. To this
pain-hardened and work-strengthened group, who had lost not
only the love and care of parents, but the hope of ever having
children of their own, there now dawned the new hope.
Here at last was Motherhood, and though it was not for all
of them personally, it might--if the power was inherited--found
here a new race.
It may be imagined how those five Daughters of Maaia,
Children of the Temple, Mothers of the Future--they had all the
titles that love and hope and reverence could give--were reared.
The whole little nation of women surrounded them with loving
service, and waited, between a boundless hope and an equally
boundless despair, to see if they, too, would be mothers.
And they were! As fast as they reached the age of twenty-five
they began bearing. Each of them, like her mother, bore five
daughters.
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