offensive manner.

After our Prussian Fritz's birth, the matter took a still closer
form: "You, dear Princess Caroline, you have now two little
Princesses again, either of whom might suit my little Fritzchen;
let us take Amelia, the second of them, who is nearest his age?"
"Agreed!" answered Princess Caroline again. "Agreed!" answered all
the parties interested: and so it was settled, that the Marriage
of Prussia to England should be a Double one, Fred of Hanover and
England to Wilhelmina, Fritz of Prussia to Amelia; and children
and parents lived thenceforth in the constant understanding that
such, in due course of years, was to be the case, though nothing
yet was formally concluded by treaty upon it. [Pollnitz,
Memoiren, ii. 193.]

Queen Sophie Dorothee of Prussia was always eager enough for
treaty, and conclusion to her scheme. True to it, she, as needle
to the pole in all weathers; sometimes in the wildest weather,
poor lady. Nor did the Hanover Serene Highnesses, at any time,
draw back or falter: but having very soon got wafted across to
England, into new more complex conditions, and wider anxieties in
that new country, they were not so impressively eager as Queen
Sophie, on this interesting point. Electress Sophie, judicious
Great-Grandmother, was not now there: Electress Sophie had died
about a month before Queen Anne; and never saw the English Canaan,
much as she had longed for it. George I., her son, a taciturn,
rather splenetic elderly Gentleman, very foreign in England, and
oftenest rather sulky there and elsewhere, was not in a humor to
be forward in that particular business.