For the sake of my female readers I shall here insert that at the time of the Prince’s visit I had not been to Europe for four years and could have no real idea as to what fashions there were like. So I asked the house in Paris, which had got my measures and was to make my frock, to follow their own notions about what would be truly chic. ‘Nous sommes convaincus, Madame,’ they wrote back, ‘que vous serez la plus belle.’ They had had the good sense to make me, in the heyday of the chemise frock – which was nothing but two vertical lines starting below the armpits and cut off above the knee – a so-called robe de style not likely to go out of fashion, with a hooped skirt of great fullness, in silver brocade. I think that it pleased the hearts of my people to see me, among the lank women of the dinner party, suddenly swell out to an unexpected voluminousness.

As now the old Chiefs and I in our talk together had got on to that very pleasant theme of my frock, I wanted to hear more of what they thought about it. But at this moment Farah stepped on to the stage, followed by Kamante carrying a wooden bowl that contained tombacco – snuff – for my guests. He looked approving but stern. He was not insensitive to popularity, but he was resolved on keeping the Kikuyu in their place, and me in mine.

‘Wait a little, Farah,’ I said. ‘I am talking with the old people, they are talking with me.’

‘No, Memsahib,’ said Farah. ‘No. Now these Kikuyus have said enough about this frock. Now it is time that they have this tombacco.’

Then came the hard times on the farm, and my certainty that I could not keep it. And then began my ever-repeated travels to Nairobi with such sorry aims as keeping my creditors quiet, obtaining a better price for the farm and, at the very end, after I had in reality lost the farm and become, so to say, a tenant in my own house, securing for my squatters the piece of land in the Reserve where according to their wish they could remain together. It took a long time before I could make the Government consent to my scheme. On these expeditions Farah was always with me.