That shilling which Bunce paid weekly to the Union she regarded as being absolutely thrown away,--as much so as though he cast it weekly into the Thames.

And she had told him so, over and over again, making heart-piercing allusions to the eight children and to the bit of meat.

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.