Yet while the mother process remains, the inherent ground
for sex-distinction remains also; and who shall say what long-
forgotten feeling, vague and nameless, was stirred in some of
these mother hearts by our arrival?
What left us even more at sea in our approach was the lack
of any sex-tradition. There was no accepted standard of what
was "manly" and what was "womanly."
When Jeff said, taking the fruit basket from his adored one,
"A woman should not carry anything," Celis said, "Why?" with
the frankest amazement. He could not look that fleet-footed,
deep-chested young forester in the face and say, "Because she is
weaker." She wasn't. One does not call a race horse weak because
it is visibly not a cart horse.
He said, rather lamely, that women were not built for heavy work.
She looked out across the fields to where some women were
working, building a new bit of wall out of large stones; looked
back at the nearest town with its woman-built houses; down at
the smooth, hard road we were walking on; and then at the little
basket he had taken from her.
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