.

Our Relations and Theirs.
What I'm trying to show here is that with these women the whole relationship of life counted in a glad, eager growing-up to join the ranks of workers in the line best loved; a deep, tender reverence for one's own mother--too deep for them to speak of freely--and beyond that, the whole, free, wide range of sisterhood, the splendid service of the country, and friendships.
To these women we came, filled with the ideas, convictions, traditions, of our culture, and undertook to rouse in them the emotions which--to us--seemed proper.
However much, or little, of true sex-feeling there was between us, it phrased itself in their minds in terms of friendship, the one purely personal love they knew, and of ultimate parentage.

Visibly we were not mothers, nor children, nor compatriots; so, if they loved us, we must be friends.
That we should pair off together in our courting days was natural to them; that we three should remain much together, as they did themselves, was also natural.

We had as yet no work, so we hung about them in their forest tasks; that was natural, too.
But when we began to talk about each couple having "homes" of our own, they could not understand it.
"Our work takes us all around the country," explained Celis.

"We cannot live in one place all the time." "We are together now," urged Alima, looking proudly at Terry's stalwart nearness.