“The attorneys are very arbitrary, I know,” said Phineas.

“Yes;—­and there would be this against you—­that it is so difficult for a man to go back to the verdure and malleability of pupildom, who has once escaped from the necessary humility of its conditions.  You will find it difficult to sit and wait for business in a Vice-Chancellor’s Court, after having had Vice-Chancellors, or men as big as Vice-Chancellors, to wait upon you.”

“I do not think much of that.”

“But others would think of it, and you would find that there were difficulties.  But you are not thinking of it in earnest?”

“Yes, in earnest.”

“Why so?  I should have thought that every day had removed you further and further from any such idea.”

“The ground I’m on at present is so slippery.”

“Well, yes.  I can understand that.  But yet it is less slippery than it used to be.”

“Ah;—­you do not exactly see.  What if I were to lose my seat?”

“You are safe at least for the next four years, I should say.”

“Ah;—­no one can tell.  And suppose I took it into my head to differ from the Government?”

“You must not do that.  You have put yourself into a boat with these men, and you must remain in the boat.  I should have thought all that was easy to you.”

“It is not so easy as it seems.  The very necessity of sitting still in the boat is in itself irksome,—­very irksome.  And then there comes some crisis in which a man cannot sit still.”

“Is there any such crisis at hand now?”

“I cannot say that;—­but I am beginning to find that sitting still is very disagreeable to me.  When I hear those fellows below having their own way, and saying just what they like, it makes me furious.  There is Robson.  He tried office for a couple of years, and has broken away; and now, by George, there is no man they think so much of as they do of Robson.  He is twice the man he was when he sat on the Treasury Bench.”

“He is a man of fortune;—­is he not?”

“I suppose so.  Of course he is, because he lives.  He never earns anything.  His wife had money.”

“My dear Finn, that makes all the difference.  When a man has means of his own he can please himself.  Do you marry a wife with money, and then you may kick up your heels, and do as you like about the Colonial Office.  When a man hasn’t money, of course he must fit himself to the circumstances of a profession.”

“Though his profession may require him to be dishonest.”

“I did not say that.”

“But I say it, my dear Low.  A man who is ready to vote black white because somebody tells him, is dishonest.  Never mind, old fellow.  I shall pull through, I daresay.  Don’t go and tell your wife all this, or she’ll be harder upon me than ever when she sees me.”  After that Mr. Low began to think that his wife’s judgment in this matter had been better than his own.