Phineas Finn | Page 9

of the Carlton Club in not sending a proper candidate. There was a great deal said about the matter, both in London and Dublin, and the blame was supposed to fall on the joint shoulders of George Morris and his elder brother. In the meantime, our hero, Phineas Finn, had been duly elected member of Parliament for the borough of Loughshane.
The Finn family could not restrain their triumphings at Killaloe, and I do not know that it would have been natural had they done so. A gosling from such a flock does become something of a real swan by getting into Parliament. The doctor had his misgivings,--had great misgivings, fearful forebodings; but there was the young man elected, and he could not help it. He could not refuse his right hand to his son or withdraw his paternal assistance because that son had been specially honoured among the young men of his country. So he pulled out of his hoard what sufficed to pay off outstanding debts,--they were not heavy,--and undertook to allow Phineas two hundred and fifty pounds a year as long as the session should last.
There was a widow lady living at Killaloe who was named Mrs. Flood Jones, and she had a daughter. She had a son also, born to inherit the property of the late Floscabel Flood Jones of Floodborough, as soon as that property should have disembarrassed itself; but with him, now serving with his regiment in India, we shall have no concern. Mrs. Flood Jones was living modestly at Killaloe on her widow's jointure,--Floodborough having, to tell the truth, pretty nearly fallen into absolute ruin,--and with her one daughter, Mary. Now on the evening before the return of Phineas Finn, Esq., M.P., to London, Mrs. and Miss Flood Jones drank tea at the doctor's house.
"It won't make a bit of change in him," Barbara Finn said to her friend Mary, up in some bedroom privacy before the tea-drinking ceremonies had altogether commenced.
"Oh, it must," said Mary.
"I tell you it won't, my dear; he is so good and so true."
"I know he is good, Barbara; and as for truth, there is no question about it, because he has never said a word to me that he might not say to any girl."
"That's nonsense, Mary."
"He never has, then, as sure as the blessed Virgin watches over us;--only you don't believe she does."
"Never mind about the Virgin now, Mary."
"But he never has. Your brother is nothing to me, Barbara."
"Then I hope he will be before the evening is over. He was walking with you all yesterday and the day before."
"Why shouldn't he,--and we that have known each other all our lives? But, Barbara, pray, pray never say a word of this to any one!"
"Is it I? Wouldn't I cut out my tongue first?"
"I don't know why I let you talk to me in this way. There has never been anything between me and Phineas,--your brother I mean."
"I know whom you mean very well."
"And I feel quite sure that there never will be. Why should there? He'll go out among great people and be a great man; and I've already found out that there's a certain Lady Laura Standish whom he admires very much."
"Lady Laura Fiddlestick!"
"A man in Parliament, you know, may look up to anybody," said Miss Mary Flood Jones.
"I want Phin to look up to you, my dear."
"That wouldn't be looking up. Placed as he is now, that would be looking down; and he is so proud that he'll never do that. But come down, dear, else they'll wonder where we are."
Mary Flood Jones was a little girl about twenty years of age, with the softest hair in the world, of a colour varying between brown and auburn,--for sometimes you would swear it was the one and sometimes the other; and she was as pretty as ever she could be. She was one of those girls, so common in Ireland, whom men, with tastes that way given, feel inclined to take up and devour on the spur of the moment; and when she liked her lion, she had a look about her which seemed to ask to be devoured. There are girls so cold-looking,--pretty girls, too, ladylike, discreet, and armed with all accomplishments,--whom to attack seems to require the same sort of courage, and the same sort of preparation, as a journey in quest of the north-west passage. One thinks of a pedestal near the Athenaeum as the most appropriate and most honourable reward of such courage. But, again, there are other girls to abstain from attacking whom is, to a man of any warmth of temperament, quite impossible. They are like water when one is athirst, like plovers' eggs in March, like cigars when one is out in the autumn. No one ever dreams of