“The Duchess of Ancaster and Lady Harcourt, as soon as the first serving attendance was over, were dismissed from the royal chairs, and most happy to join our group, and partake of our repast. The Duchess, extremely fatigued with standing, drew a small body of troops before her, that she might take a few minutes’ rest on a form by one of the doors; and Lady Charlotte Bertie did the same, to relieve an ankle which she had unfortunately sprained. ‘Poor Miss Burney!’ cried the good-natured Duchess, ‘I wish she could sit down, for she is unused to this work. She does not know yet what it is to stand for five hours following, as we do....’ “In one of the colleges I stayed so long in an old chapel, lingering over antique monuments, that all the party were vanished before I missed them, except Doctors and Professors; for we had a train of those everywhere; and I was then a little surprised by the approach of one of them, saying, ‘You seem inclined to abide with us, Miss Burney?’—and then another, in an accent of facetious gallantry, cried, ‘No, no; don’t let us shut up Miss Burney among old tombs!—No, no!’” At Magdalene College, Miss Burney and two or three other members of the suite, having slipped away to a small parlour, sat down to rest, and enjoy some apricots which Mr. Fairly had brought in his pockets. Suddenly the door opened; the Queen entered; the truants started up, and tried to look as if sitting was a posture unknown to them; while desperate exertions were made to hide the forbidden fruit. ‘I discovered,’ says Fanny, ‘that our appetites were to be supposed annihilated, at the same time that our strength was to be invincible.’ However, her fatigues ended at last, and she was permitted to spend the Monday in peace among the pictures and gardens of Nuneham, not being commanded to join in the excursion to Blenheim.