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What a good, and true, and beautiful mother you would make for a boy-child!" The shooting of the door-hasp seemed to let go the flood-gates of her heart. There was the great longing of her heart to bear a boy-child. "For joy that a man is born into the world" seemed vaguely ringing in her ears.
Our tribe not like yours; we want girl children first; we not always wish boy-child born just for fight. Your people, they care only for war-path; our tribe more peaceful. Very good sign first grandchild to be girl. I tell you why: girl-child may be some time mother herself; very grand thing to be mother." I felt I had caught the secret of her meaning.
But it was yet winter, and the rains were slanting and the fogs drifting, when the wife of the Great Tyee stood before him and said: "'Before the salmon run I shall give to you a great gift. Will you honor me most if it is the gift of a boy-child or a girl-child? The Great Tyee loved the woman. He was stern with his people, hard with his tribe; he ruled his council fires with a will of stone.
He said nothing more just then, but at that moment he felt as if he, too, knew, not merely hoped, or guessed, something about their joint future, knew in the depths of him that a boy-child would some day be sent to Rosamund and to him, to influence and to change their lives. The wind began to fail almost suddenly, the sky grew brighter, a shaft of sun lay on the marble at their feet.
'The wise men of our coast have said that the girl-child who will some day bear children of her own, will also bring abundance of salmon at her birth; but the boy-child brings to you but himself. "'Let the salmon go," shouted the people, 'but give us a future Great Tyee. Give us the boy-child. "And when the child was born it was a boy. "'Evil will fall upon you, wailed the Great Tyee.
At her man's door she was standing, barefooted, fray-kirtled as of old; but riper, of more assured and triumphant beauty. In her arms a boy-child, lusty and half-naked, struggled to be fed, seeking with both fat hands to forage for himself.
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