"And if I have to go down to the ould country again this session,
you'll go with me?"
"If I can I will."
"That's my boy! And it's I that hope you'll have the chance. What's
the good of turning these fellows out if one isn't to get something
for one's trouble?"
CHAPTER VII
Mr. and Mrs. Bunce
It was three o'clock on the Thursday night before Mr. Daubeny's
speech was finished. I do not think that there was any truth in the
allegation made at the time, that he continued on his legs an hour
longer than the necessities of his speech required, in order that
five or six very ancient Whigs might be wearied out and shrink to
their beds. Let a Whig have been ever so ancient and ever so weary,
he would not have been allowed to depart from Westminster Hall that
night. Sir Everard Powell was there in his bath-chair at twelve,
with a doctor on one side of him and a friend on the other, in some
purlieu of the House, and did his duty like a fine old Briton as he
was. That speech of Mr. Daubeny's will never be forgotten by any one
who heard it. Its studied bitterness had perhaps never been equalled,
and yet not a word was uttered for the saying of which he could be
accused of going beyond the limits of parliamentary antagonism. It is
true that personalities could not have been closer, that accusations
of political dishonesty and of almost worse than political cowardice
and falsehood could not have been clearer, that no words in the
language could have attributed meaner motives or more unscrupulous
conduct.
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