One day he was adding a line or two with enormous labour to “ The Oak Tree, a Poem

First, she asked him, with a proper, but somewhat clumsy curtsey, to forgive her her intrusion. Then, rising to her full height again, which must have been something over six feet two, she went on to say⁠—but with such a cackle of nervous laughter, so much tee-heeing and haw-hawing that Orlando thought she must have escaped from a lunatic asylum⁠—that she was the Archduchess Harriet Griselda of Finster-Aarhorn and Scand-op-Boom in the Romanian territory. She desired above all things to make his acquaintance, she said. She had taken lodgings over a baker’s shop at the Park Gates. She had seen his picture and it was the image of a sister of hers who was⁠—here she guffawed⁠—long since dead. She was visiting the English court. The Queen was her Cousin. The King was a very good fellow but seldom went to bed sober. Here she tee-heed and haw-hawed again. In short, there was nothing for it but to ask her in and give her a glass of wine.