Daisy’s heart sank: she was full of vague apprehensions. But having asked for help, she could hardly refuse this generous granting of it, for indeed Lucia was giving up her whole morning.

‘Very good of you,’ she said.

‘Lend me your copy of the speech, then,’ said Lucia, ‘and might I borrow your ruff, just to encourage myself. Now let me read through the speech to myself. Yes… yes… crescendo, and flare up then… pause again; a touch of tenderness… Well, as you insist on it I’ll try to show you what I mean. Terribly nervous, though.’

Lucia advanced and spoke in the most ingratiating tones to her army and the mob.

‘Please have patience with me, ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, ‘while I go through the speech once more. Wonderful words, aren’t they? I know I shan’t do them justice. Let me see: the palfrey with the Queen will come out from the garden of the Ambermere Arms, will it not? Then will the whole mob, please, hurry into the garden and then come out romping and cheering and that sort of thing in front of me. When I get to where the table is, that is to say, where the palfrey will stand as I make my speech, some of the mob must fall back, and the rest sit on the grass, so that the spectators may see. Now, please.’

Lucia stalked in from the garden, joining the mob now and then to show them how to gambol, and nimbly vaulted (thanks to callisthenics) on to the table on which was the chair where she sat on horseback.

Then with a great sweep of her arm she began to speak. The copy of the speech which she carried flew out of her hand, but that made no difference, for she had it all by heart, and without pause, except for the bursts of cheering from the mob, when she pointed at them, she declaimed it all, her voice now rising, now falling, now full of fire, now tender and motherly. Then she got down from the table, and passed along the line of her troops, beckoned to the mob – which in the previous scene had been cooks and sailors and all sorts of things – to close up behind her with shouts and cheers and gambollings, and went off down the garden path again.

‘That sort of thing, dear Daisy, don’t you think?’ she said to the Queen, returning her ruff. ‘So crude and awkwardly done I know, but perhaps that may be the way to put a little life into it. Ah, there’s your copy of the speech. Quite familiar to me, I found. I dare say I learned it when I was at school. Now, I really must be off. I wish I could think that I had been any use.’