He laughed heartily, and declared himself well rid of a very profitless profession; cut some little joke about Mr Moffat and his thrashing, and left on those around him an impression that he was a man so constituted, so strong in his own resolves, so steadily pursuant of his own work, that no little contentions of this kind could affect him.

Men admired his easy laughter, as, shuffling his half-crowns with both his hands in his trouser-pockets, he declared that Messrs Romer and Reddypalm were the best friends he had known for this many a day.
But not the less did he walk out from the room in which he was standing a broken-hearted man.

Hope could not buoy him up as she may do other ex-members in similarly disagreeable circumstances.

He could not afford to look forward to what further favours parliamentary future might have in store for him after a lapse of five or six years.

Five or six years! Why, his life was not worth four years' purchase; of that he was perfectly aware: he could not now live without the stimulus of brandy; and yet, while he took it, he knew he was killing himself.