Few Englishwomen, perhaps, could preside in a _salon_, but nearly all can infuse cheerful ease into a gathering of guests, whether it be at a house party or a humble Sunday supper. Lady Monkshood, who puts me at once at ease when I am ushered into a room full of opulent and unknown strangers of a Saturday afternoon at The Hall, sheds no ray by one atom warmer than little Mrs Periwinkle who keeps a piece of cold beef and some stewed fruit going on Thursdays in the Temple for any scribbling folk who care to drop in. And both of them, Lady Monkshood and Mrs Periwinkle, have this in common, that there is no corner of the globe in which they show to greater advantage than in the room where they welcome their friends. The Englishwoman’s home is her most perfect setting, and those who do not know her in it know her not. She grows into it, by some wonderful instinct of Englishwomen, irradiating it and letting it irradiate her. Her husband may show to more advantage in spacious and crowded scenes, but if she look not well at her own table she will look well nowhere: for in the house that she has made her own, built up and ruled, among the “things” that are so part of herself that she can hardly leave them without a pang, even for the joy of returning to them with rapture, watching the service which answers her will and the faces which reflect her love, an added grace is given to her figure, a brightness to her eyes and a melody to her voice. The homes of England go far to make England herself, they are her mystic source of strength, her pledge of security. Not all are splendid, not all have ease; care knocks daily at the door of too many, as poverty too often dims their lustre: but within them all the same essential quality shines out, of hospitality without ceremony, comfort without extravagance, intercourse without parade; and the Englishwoman with her unostentatious pride, her wistful solicitude, her rather unresponsive mind and her extremely sensitive heart is there at the centre.