Nor was few women going on adventures the least bit odd for the era in which the books were written. And that being an age (WWI to WWII) where "men got to go out on exciting adventures" was often a rose-colored-glasses translation of "over 100,000 lucky men got to become casualties of war in merely the Second Battle of Ypres, in which the Germans first used poison gas on a large scale" grim realities...being a woman starts to sound like the better deal.