ean to go to the wall
himself," Bunce would say to his wife, "Labour must look alive, and
put somebody else there."

Mrs. Bunce was a comfortable motherly woman, who loved her husband
but hated politics. As he had an aversion to his superiors in the
world because they were superiors, so had she a liking for them for
the same reason. She despised people poorer than herself, and thought
it a fair subject for boasting that her children always had meat for
dinner. If it was ever so small a morsel, she took care that they had
it, in order that the boast might be maintained. The world had once
or twice been almost too much for her,--when, for instance, her
husband had been ill; and again, to tell the truth, for the last
three months of that long period in which Phineas had omitted to pay
his bills; but she had kept a fine brave heart during those troubles,
and could honestly swear that the children always had a bit of
meat, though she herself had been occasionally without it for days
together. At such times she would be more than ordinarily meek to
Mr. Margin, and especially courteous to the old lady who lodged in
her first-floor drawing-room,--for Phineas lived up two pairs of
stairs,--and she would excuse such servility by declaring that there
was no knowing how soon she might want assistance. But her husband,
in such emergencies, would become furious and quarrelsome, and would
declare that Labour was going to the wall, and that something very
strong must be done at once. That shilling which Bunce paid weekly to
the Union she regarded as being absolutely thrown away,--as much so
as though he cast it weekly into the Thames. And she had told him so,
over and over again, making heart-piercing allusions to the eight
children and to the bit of meat. He would always endeavour to explain
to her that there was no other way under the sun for keeping Labour
from being sent to the wall;--but he would do so hopelessly and
altogether ineffectually, and she had come to regard him as a lunatic
to the extent of that one weekly shilling.

She had a woman's instinctive partiality for comeliness in a man, and
was very fond of Phineas Finn because he was handsome. And now she
was very proud of him because he was a member of Parliament. She
had heard,--from her husband, who had told her the fact with much
disgust,--that the sons of Dukes and Earls go into Parliament, and
she liked to think that the fine young man to whom she talked more
or l