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.
"I don't understand," she said quite sweetly.

"Are the women in your country so weak that they could not carry such a thing as that ?" "It is a convention," he said.

"We assume that motherhood is a sufficient burden--that men should carry all the others." "What a beautiful feeling!" she said, her blue eyes shining.
"Does it work ?" asked Alima, in her keen, swift way.