Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/214

 very house where she slept. Now began an endless round of hospitable tasks, and worst of all she must wait upon the pretty stranger who was a year younger than herself, but whose rank as visiting taupo gave her precedence. Lola again became troublesome. She quarrelled with the younger girls, was impertinent to the older ones, shirked her work, talked spitefully against the stranger. Perhaps all of this might have been only temporary and had no more far-reaching results than a temporary lack of favour in her new household, had it not been for a still more unfortunate event. The Don Juan of the village was a sleek, discreet man of about forty, a widower, a matai, a man of circumspect manner and winning ways. He was looking for a second wife and turned his attention toward the visitor who was lodged in the guest house of the next village. But Fuativa was a cautious and calculating lover. He wished to look over his future bride carefully and so he visited her house casually, without any declaration of his intention. And he noticed that Lola had reached a robust girlhood and stopped to pluck this ready fruit by the way, while he was still undecided about the more serious business of matrimony.

With all her capacity for violence, Lola possessed also a strong capacity for affection. Fuativa was a skilled and considerate lover. Few girls were quite so fortunate in their first lovers, and so few felt such unmixed regret when the first love affair was broken off. Fuativa won her easily and after three weeks which