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 less every day should sit with the sons of Dukes and Earls. When
Phineas had really brought distress upon her by owing her some thirty
or forty pounds, she could never bring herself to be angry with
him,--because he was handsome and because he dined out with Lords.
And she had triumphed greatly over her husband, who had desired to be
severe upon his aristocratic debtor, when the money had all been paid
in a lump.
"I don't know that he's any great catch," Bunce had said, when the
prospect of their lodger's departure had been debated between them.
"Jacob," said his wife, "I don't think you feel it when you've got
people respectable about you.
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