“Change them? Do the husbands then take the wives’ ‘maiden names’?”
“Oh, no,” he laughed. “The man keeps his own and gives it to her, too.”
“Then she just loses hers and takes a new one—how unpleasant! We won’t do that!” Alima said decidedly.
Terry was good-humored about it. “I don’t care what you do or don’t do so long as we have that wedding pretty soon,” he said, reaching a strong brown hand after Alima’s, quite as brown and nearly as strong.
“As to giving us things—of course we can see that you’d like to, but we are glad you can’t,” Celis continued. “You see, we love you just for yourselves—we wouldn’t want you to—to pay anything. Isn’t it enough to know that you are loved personally—and just as men?”
Enough or not, that was the way we were married. We had a great triple wedding in the biggest temple of all, and it looked as if most of the nation was present. It was very solemn and very beautiful. Someone had written a new song for the occasion, nobly beautiful, about the New Hope for their people—the New Tie with other lands—Brotherhood as well as Sisterhood, and, with evident awe, Fatherhood.
Terry was always restive under their talk of fatherhood. “Anybody’d think we were High Priests of—of Philoprogenitiveness!” he protested. “These women think of nothing but children, seems to me! We’ll teach ’em!”
He was so certain of what he was going to teach, and Alima so uncertain in her moods of reception, that Jeff and I feared the worst. We tried to caution him—much good that did. The big handsome fellow drew himself up to his full height, lifted that great chest of his, and laughed.
“There are three separate marriages,” he said. “I won’t interfere with yours—nor you with mine.”
So the great day came, and the countless crowds of women, and we three bridegrooms without any supporting “best men,” or any other men to back us up, felt strangely small as we came forward.