"
"If there were no one in London drank more than I do, the wine
merchants would have a bad time of it. And so the new Cabinet
Minister has been garrotted in the street. Of course I'm sorry for
poor Laura's sake."
"Luckily he's not much the worse for it;--only a little bruised."
"I wonder whether it's on the cards he should be improved by
it;--worse, except in the way of being strangled, he could not be.
However, as he's my brother-in-law, I'm obliged to you for rescuing
him. Come, I'll go to bed. I must say, if he was to be garrotted I
should like to have been there to see it." That was the manner in
which Lord Chiltern received the tidings of the terrible accident
which had occurred to his near relative.
CHAPTER XXXI
Finn for Loughton
By three o'clock in the day after the little accident which was told
in the last chapter, all the world knew that Mr. Kennedy, the new
Cabinet Minister, had been garrotted, or half garrotted, and that
that child of fortune, Phineas Finn, had dropped upon the scene out
of heaven at the exact moment of time, had taken the two garrotters
prisoners, and saved the Cabinet Minister's neck and valuables,--if
not his life. "Bedad," said Laurence Fitzgibbon, when he came to hear
this, "that fellow'll marry an heiress, and be Secretary for Oireland
yet.
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