Some of her friends were frank enough in their comments on her situation. There was something, no doubt, in Miss Burney’s aspect which drew such remarks as these from the wife of an Irish bishop: “Well; the Queen, to be sure, is a great deal better dressed than she used to be; but for all that, I really think it is but an odd thing for you!—Dear, I think it’s something so out of the way for you!—I can’t think how you set about it. It must have been very droll to you at first. A great deal of honour, to be sure, to serve a Queen, and all that; but, I dare say a lady’s-maid could do it better.... It must be a mighty hurry-scurry life! You don’t look at all fit for it, to judge by appearances, for all its great honour, and all that.” Colonel Digby had previously accused her of being _absent_ in her official occupation, and she had owned that she had at first found attention _unattainable_. “She had even,” she added, “and not seldom, handed the Queen her fan before her gown, and her gloves before her cap!” The Vice-Chamberlain thought this very likely, and observed that such matters did not seem trifles to her Majesty. The Diary for the earlier months of 1790 contains little more than what the writer calls ‘loose scraps of anecdotes,’ of which we can find room for only one or two specimens. Here is an account of a conversation with Colonel Manners, who, besides being an equerry, was also a Member of Parliament: “I had been informed he had once made an attempt to speak, during the Regency business, last winter; I begged to know how the matter stood, and he made a most frank display of its whole circumstances. “‘Why, they were speaking away,’ he cried, ‘upon the Regency, and so— and they were saying the King could not reign, and recover; and Burke was making some of his eloquence, and talking; and, says he, ‘hurled from his throne’—and so I put out my finger in this manner, as if I was in a great passion, for I felt myself very red, and I was in a monstrous passion I suppose, but I was only going to say ‘Hear! Hear!’ but I happened to lean one hand down upon my knee, in this way, just as Mr. Pitt does when he wants to speak; and I stooped forward, just as if I was going to rise up and begin; but just then I caught Mr. Pitt’s eye, looking at me so pitifully; he thought I was going to speak, and he was frightened to death, for he thought—for the thing was, he got up himself, and he said over all I wanted to say; and the thing is, he almost always does; for just as I have something particular to say, Mr. Pitt begins, and goes through it all, so that he don’t leave anything more to be said about it; and so I suppose, as he looked at me so pitifully, he thought I should say it first, or else that I should get into some scrape, because I was so warm and looking so red.’ “Any comment would disgrace this; I will therefore only tell you his opinion, in his own words, of one of our late taxes.[104]