"It will
take a good one to wring eight thousand soldiers out of His Majesty
of Prussia, but if any man can do it, it will be Johnny Churchill!
I remember him even when we were boys together. He had a tongue
that would flatter the nose off your face, if you did but listen to
him! A voice of silver, and a hand of iron--those are the gifts
which have made the fortunes of my Lord of Marlborough."
"Ay, an iron hand for keeping money when once the fingers have
closed upon it!" laughed one.
"And a wife who rules the Queen, and is bent upon making her
husband the greatest man in the kingdom--though she will always
keep the upper hand of her lord, you will see. Marlborough, whom no
combination of military prowess can daunt, trembles and turns pale
before the frown of his wife!"
"Yet it is not fear but love which makes him tremble," said
another. "Although their children are grown to adolescence, he
loves her yet as dotingly as ever youthful swain loves the Phyllis
of his boyhood's amours!"
"That is nothing to sneer at," remarked Lord Claud, speaking for
the first time. "Rather should we thank Heaven, in these days of
profligacy and vice, that we have a Queen upon the throne who loves
her husband faithfully and well, and a general, victorious in arms,
who would gladly lay down his victor's laurels for the joy of
living in peaceful obscurity at the side of his wife!"
Nobody laughed at Lord Claud's speech, though it would have
provoked mirth if another had given utterance to the sentiment.
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