Chapter 11 - Winter, 1777-78
“By the way,” said Martha, “where is the Marquis de Lafayette? The general hasn’t told me. I’ve heard of him.”
“Oh. The marquis? He’s off to make an invasion of Canada. With General Conway.”
“Canada? Conway?”
“The Board of War ordered it,” Kitty Greene said, and picked up her skirts and sloshed her galoshes through the snow.
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“There are stories.”
“I should like to hear them.”
“Well, straws perhaps,” Kitty said. “Straws in a breeze. But the breeze could turn to a gale. When the marquis--that’s Lafayette--was appointed to this Canada campaign by the Board of War, he was invited to York in Pennsylvania, where the Congress is. General Gates is there, too.”
“Oh, he would be,” Martha said. “His wife would see to it that--” and stopped abruptly, remembering her position.
Kitty Greene gave her a wry smile and didn’t pursue that topic.
“They tendered the boy marquis a dinner,” Kitty went on, “and flattered him and fawned on him. Gates and Mifflin and Conway and the officers who’ve taken up with the cabal. They sat him on Gates’s right, as guest of honor, and toasted him and Gates, and I suppose everything else under the sun, and then the marquis got to his feet and toasted General Washington, and all the faces there went pink, and some glasses went untouched. Lafayette was in a rage about it when he came back.”
-- MAN FROM MT. VERNON by Burke Boyce (1961) (Novelization) Apparently Martha’s out of the loop, but Kitty knows what’s what. Also, the toast scene. One of my favorite anecdotes.