at spring, something unexpected and something
unbelievably wonderful would happen. They hunted for that spring
untiringly--hunted--and hunted--and hunted. At last they found it.
And after they found it, we no longer interested them. The mystery and
fascination had gone. After all, a toy is only a toy."

"Then came our great trouble--that terrible time of the illicit hunting.
Every man of them making love to some one of you. Every woman of you
making love to some one of them. That was a year of despair for me.
I could see no way out. It seemed to me that you were all drifting to
destruction and that I could not stay you. And then I began to realize
that the root of evil was only one thing idleness. Idle men! Idle women!
And as I wondered what we should do next, Nature took the matter in her
hands. She gave all you women work to do."

Julia paused. Her still gray eyes fixed on faraway things.

"Honey-Boy was born, then Peterkin, then Angela, then Honey-Bunch. And
suddenly everything was right again. But, somehow, the men seemed soon
to exhaust the mystery and fascination of fatherhood just as they
had exhausted the mystery and fascination of husbandhood. They became
restless and irritable. It seemed to me that another danger beset
us--vague, monstrous, looming--but I did not know what. You see they
have the souls of discoverers and explorers and conquerors, these
earth-men. They are creators. Their souls are filled with an eternal
unrest. Always they must attempt one thing more; ever they seek
something beyond. They would stop the sun and the moon in their courses;
they would harness the hurricane; they would chain the everlasting
stars. Sea, earth, sky are but their playgrounds; past, present, future
their servants; they lust to conquer the unexplored areas of space and
time. It came to me that what they needed was work of another kind. One
night, when I was lying awake thinking it over, the idea of the New
Camp burst on my mind. Do you remember how delighted they were when I
suggested it to them, how delighted you were, how gay and jubilant we
all were, how, for days and days, we talked of nothing else? And we were
as happy over the idea as they. For a long time, we thought that we were
going to help.

"We thought that we were going with them every day, not to work but
to sit in the nearby shade, to encourage them with our praise and
appreciation. And we did go for a month. But they had to carry us all
the way--or n