Mrs. Bunce was a comfortable motherly woman, who loved her husband but hated politics.  As he had an aversion to his superiors in the world because they were superiors, so had she a liking for them for the same reason.  She despised people poorer than herself, and thought it a fair subject for boasting that her children always had meat for dinner.  If it was ever so small a morsel, she took care that they had it, in order that the boast might be maintained.  The world had once or twice been almost too much for her,—­when, for instance, her husband had been ill; and again, to tell the truth, for the last three months of that long period in which Phineas had omitted to pay his bills; but she had kept a fine brave heart during those troubles, and could honestly swear that the children always had a bit of meat, though she herself had been occasionally without it for days together.  At such times she would be more than ordinarily meek to Mr. Margin, and especially courteous to the old lady who lodged in her first-floor drawing-room,—­for Phineas lived up two pairs of stairs,—­and she would excuse such servility by declaring that there was no knowing how soon she might want assistance.  But her husband, in such emergencies, would become furious and quarrelsome, and would declare that Labour was going to the wall, and that something very strong must be done at once.  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.  When Phineas had really brought distress upon her by owing her some thirty or forty pounds, she could never bring herself to be angry with him,—­because he was handsome and because he dined out with Lords.  And she had triumphed greatly over her husband, who had desired to be severe upon his aristocratic debtor, when the money had all been paid in a lump.

“I don’t know that he’s any great catch,” Bunce had said, when the prospect of their lodger’s departure had been debated between them.

“Jacob,” said his wife, “I don’t think you feel it when you’ve got people respectable about you.”