Ratler, and that Mr.
Gresham played no chess with Mr. Bonteen. Bonteen, indeed, was a
noisy pushing man whom nobody seemed to like, and Phineas wondered
why he should be at Loughlinter, and why he should be in office. His
friend Laurence Fitzgibbon had indeed once endeavoured to explain
this. "A man who can vote hard, as I call it; and who will speak a
few words now and then as they're wanted, without any ambition that
way, may always have his price. And if he has a pretty wife into the
bargain, he ought to have a pleasant time of it." Mr. Ratler no doubt
was a very useful man, who thoroughly knew his business; but yet,
as it seemed to Phineas, no very great distinction was shown to
Mr. Ratler at Loughlinter. "If I got as high as that," he said to
himself, "I should think myself a miracle of luck. And yet nobody
seems to think anything of Ratler. It is all nothing unless one can
go to the very top."
"I believe I did right to accept office," Mr. Monk said to him one
day, as they sat together on a rock close by one of the little
bridges over the Linter. "Indeed, unless a man does so when the bonds
of the office tendered to him are made compatible with his own views,
he declines to proceed on the open path towards the prosecution of
those views.
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