over the table and spoke,--"I 'll tell you what
it is. Did you ever play the game called Brag, with very little money in
your pocket?"

Heathcote nodded what might mean assent or the opposite.

"That's what Parliament is," resumed O'Shea. "You sit there, night after
night, year after year, wondering within yourself, 'Would it be safe for
me to play this hand? Shall I venture now?' You know well that if you
_do_ back your luck and lose, that it's all up with you forever, so that
it's really a mighty serious thing to risk it. At last, maybe, you take
courage. You think you 've got the cards; it's half-past two o'clock;
the House is thin, and every one is tired and sleepy. Up you get on your
legs to speak. You're not well down again, till a fellow from the back
benches, you thought sound asleep, gets up and tears all you said to
tatters,--destroys your facts, scatters your inferences, and maybe
laughs at your figures of speech."

"Not so pleasant, that," said Heathcote, languidly.

"Pleasant! it's the devil!" said O'Shea, violently; "for you hear the
pen scratching away up in the reporters' gallery, and you know it will
be all over Europe next morning."

"Then why submit to all this?" asked Heathcote, more eagerly.

"Just as I said awhile ago; because you might chance upon a good card,
and 'brag' on it for something worth while. It's all luck."

"Your picture of political life is not fascinating," said Heathcote,
coldly.

"After all, do you know, I like it," resumed O'Shea. "As long as you
've a seat in the House, there's no saying when you might n't be wanted;
and then, when the session's over, and you go down to the country, you
are the terror of all the fellows that never sat in Parliament. If they
say a word about public matters, you put them down at once with a cool
'I assure you, sir, that's not the view we take of it in the House.'"

"I 'd say, 'What's that to _me?_'"

"No, you would n't,--not a bit of it; or, if you did, nobody would mind
you, and for this reason,--it's the _real_ place, after all. Why do you
pay Storr and Mortimer more than another jeweller? Just because you're
sure of the article. There now, that's how it is!"

"There's some one knocking at the door, I think," said Heathcote; but
at the same instant Joe's head appeared inside, with a request to be
admitted. "'T is the telegraph," said he, presenting a packet.

"I have asked for a small thing in Jamaica, some ten or twelve hundred
a