"We are keen on hockey," said my guide, and, as she spoke, a girl,
flushed and radiant, caught me across the most sensitive part of
the shin with a hockey-stick. No need to ask _her_ if she felt well.
I limped away, and, in another part of the field, saw a comely and
robust maiden practising drop-kicks, utterly regardless of the fact
that I was looking on. I received the football in the pit of my
stomach, and the name of CRICHTON BROWNE died on my lips.

My guide smiled as she saw that I had taken in the scene that was
being enacted under my very nose.

"Do you play cricket?" she asked, with something like pity in her
eyes. I did _not_--but I was by this time in such condign fear of this
young Amazon that I was really afraid to admit my total ignorance of
the sport. She made me wicket-keep for her, _without_ pads, for an
entire hour, at the end of which I readily assented to an invitation
for further exploration.

We went through endless passages to an endless gymnasium, and every
now and then I came across an Indian club or a dumb-bell, wielded by
energetic female athletes. I should have liked to ask them whether
they felt well, but I realised--only just in time--that the question
would have been an impertinence.

"Are you getting satisfied?" said my unwearied guide, with another of
her smiles, "or, do you still think we are a puny misshapen race?"

"Quite satisfied!" I replied, faintly, as I endeavoured to unclose a
rapidly discolouring eye, "in fact, I begin to discredit that alarmist
cry--"