Yet, with exquisite forbearance she refrains from exercising her humour at his expense, and even pretends to acknowledge the importance of these things for him, though he would be the first to admit that they had no importance for her. She will hardly complain, though well she might, at the amount of his leisure which he spends on himself alone, for men are unthinkingly extravagant in what they spend in time and money on amusing and feeding themselves. No doubt she is wise in making these accommodations, seeing how men are constituted, but it would be only graceful on the men’s part to acknowledge that they are in need of them. They might be sadly embarrassed if they had to cast up a comparative account of their own and their wife’s expenditure on amusement, and the best they could say for themselves would be that men, as machines, were more expensive to maintain in good running order than women. However, we need not labour the little difference too hard. English men and women, as a rule, are good sportsmen, the one to the other. They can play together as well as they can work together, without unnecessary ceremony or condescension; and if the man can play the woman off her feet, she can dance him off his legs. Unlike most other nations, English men and women, wherever they go, take their games with them as part of the good fellowship which they spread in the out-of-the-way corners of the world. In India, in Africa, in South America, in ports of call and in remote islands, no British colony settles long before its sporting club is started, where its members may meet one another daily for friendly intercourse and friendly emulation. It is the great bulwark against loneliness, the focus of simple gaiety in the whole station, and, even if it fosters overmuch our insular solidarity, it encourages healthiness and counteracts the potent denaturalising force which other continents are apt to exercise over the European. The picture of Saigon which Claude Farrère draws in his novel “Les Civilisés” is not a pleasant one, nor one that any Englishman could draw of an English colony. As a nation we keep as hard and as healthy abroad as we keep at home, and for this our English amusements are partly to be thanked. The result might possibly be attained with less expense of time and energy, but at least it is attained. Our respect for a good playmate is, perhaps exaggerated, but it is genuine, and the conception of a good playmate, if it does not exhaust the virtues, is not a mean one. Above all, our men and women apply this conception to one another, as a strong attachment between the sexes added to that of nature. Long therefore, may English men and women play together, since thereby they will know one another, respect one another and help one another more thoroughly. CHAPTER XII THE ENGLISHWOMAN IN PARLIAMENT