Explore "25" by Beverley Nichols on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the next day I was summoned to the Queen. I must here admit, with due shame and contrition, that I had never been to see a Queen before. I really don't know why. Still, the fact remains that I knew nothing whatever about Queens, especially Balkan ones. I had read about them in certain lurid accounts of themselves, from which I gathered that they must all be very temperamental, and I had seen photographs in the illustrated papers, from which I concluded that all photographers were Republicans. Beyond that, my mind was a blank.
Still, two things one knew instinctively about Queens. They liked to be called Ma'am, and they had to be approached in a morning coat. The ma'am business struck me as faintly ridiculous. I practised it while dressing, and pranced round the sunlight-flooded room saying, ‘Yes ma'am, no ma'am, three bags full. ' However, when one has on one's morning coat the ma'am becomes something rather awe-inspiring.