“I don’t know that our Mr. Phineas will ever be like that, Jacob.”

“That’s gammon, Jane.  That’s the way as women gets themselves took in always.  Our Mr. Phineas!  Why should our Mr. Phineas be better than anybody else?”

“He’s always acted handsome, Jacob.”

“There was one time he could not pay his lodgings for wellnigh nine months, till his governor come down with the money.  I don’t know whether that was handsome.  It knocked me about terrible, I know.”

“He always meant honest, Jacob.”

“I don’t know that I care much for a man’s meaning when he runs short of money.  How is he going to see his way, with his seat in Parliament, and this giving up of his profession?  He owes us near a quarter now.”

“He paid me two months this morning, Jacob; so he don’t owe a farthing.”

“Very well;—­so much the better for us.  I shall just have a few words with Mr. Low, and see what he says to it.  For myself I don’t think half so much of Parliament folk as some do.  They’re for promising everything before they’s elected; but not one in twenty of ’em is as good as his word when he gets there.”

Mr. Bunce was a copying journeyman, who spent ten hours a day in Carey Street with a pen between his fingers; and after that he would often spend two or three hours of the night with a pen between his fingers in Marlborough Street.  He was a thoroughly hard-working man, doing pretty well in the world, for he had a good house over his head, and always could find raiment and bread for his wife and eight children; but, nevertheless, he was an unhappy man because he suffered from political grievances, or, I should more correctly say, that his grievances were semi-political and semi-social.  He had no vote, not being himself the tenant of the house in Great Marlborough Street.  The tenant was a tailor who occupied the shop, whereas Bunce occupied the whole of the remainder of the premises.  He was a lodger, and lodgers were not as yet trusted with the franchise.  And he had ideas, which he himself admitted to be very raw, as to the injustice of the manner in which he was paid for his work.  So much a folio, without reference to the way in which his work was done, without regard to the success of his work, with no questions asked of himself, was, as he thought, no proper way of remunerating a man for his labours.  He had long since joined a Trade Union, and for two years past had paid a subscription of a shilling a week towards its funds.  He longed to be doing some battle against his superiors, and to be putting himself in opposition to his employers;—­not that he objected personally to Messrs. Foolscap, Margin, and Vellum, who always made much of him as a useful man;—­but because some such antagonism would be manly, and the fighting of some battle would be the right thing to do.  “If Labour don’t mean to go to the wall himself,” Bunce would say to his wife, “Labour must look alive, and put somebody else there.”