Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/177

 Her sister's overindulgence of the baby made Tuna's task much harder than those of her companions. But she reaped her reward in the slightly extra gentleness with which they treated their most burdened associate, and here again the group saved her from a pronounced temperamental response to the exigencies of her home life.

A little further away lived Fitu and Ula, Maliu and Pola, two pairs of sisters. Fitu and Maliu, girls of about thirteen, were just withdrawing from the gang, turning their younger brothers and sisters over to Ula and Pola, and beginning to take a more active part in the affairs of their households. Ula was alert, pretty, pampered. Her household might in all fairness be compared to ours; it consisted of her mother, her father, two sisters and two brothers. True, her uncle who lived next door was the matai of the household, but still this little biological family had a strong separate existence of its own and the children showed the results of it. Lalala, the mother, was an intelligent and still beautiful woman, even after bearing six children in close succession. She came from a family of high rank, and because she had had no brothers, her father had taught her much of the genealogical material usually taught to the favourite son. Her knowledge of the social structure of the community and of the minutiæ of the ceremonies which had formerly surrounded the court of the king of Manu'a was as full as that of any middle-aged man in the community. She was skilled in the