Page:Our Girls.pdf/109

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TOMMY'S SISTER
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millionfold more variety of usefulness—that slight, seventeen-year-old girl who is working it. Shall he not take every care of this machine also? Only Tommy's sister, but a bit of the human machinery that is the greatest wealth of the world.

Tommy's sister has her faults, of course she has; God made her, as Mrs. Poyser says, to match her men, but she is wonderful, and war-work has done her good. Wholesome food, regular hours, healthy workshops, animated company, human discipline, and above all, the sense of being somebody of importance in the world, doing something of consequence, have made a better woman of her. In the long march of the centuries we see two general views of woman's relation to labour; one that she should be the drudge, doing without reward or recognition all the meaner and lower forms of work; the other that she should be the parasite, doing no work at all, being kept from its supposed dangers for the protection of her maternal functions, or perhaps