one on earth might have got in without spending a shilling."

Phineas didn't at all like this. "I don't think any one could have
got in," said he, "without knowing Lord Tulla."

"Lord Tulla was nowhere, my dear boy, and could have nothing to say
to it. But never mind that. You meet me in the lobby at two. There'll
be a lot of us there, and we'll go in together. Have you seen
Fitzgibbon?" Then Barrington Erle went off to other business, and
Finn was congratulated by other men. But it seemed to him that the
congratulations of his friends were not hearty. He spoke to some men,
of whom he thought that he knew they would have given their eyes
to be in Parliament;--and yet they spoke of his success as being a
very ordinary thing. "Well, my boy, I hope you like it," said one
middle-aged gentleman whom he had known ever since he came up to
London. "The difference is between working for nothing and working
for money. You'll have to work for nothing now."

"That's about it, I suppose," said Phineas.

"They say the House is a comfortable club," said the middle-aged
friend, "but I confess that I shouldn't like being rung away from my
dinner myself."

At two punctually Phineas was in the lobby at Westminster, and then
he found himself taken into the House with a crowd of other men. The
old and young, and they who were neither old nor young, were mingled
together, and there seemed to be very little respect of persons. On
three or four occasions there was some cheering when a popular man or
a great leader came in; but the work of the day left but little clear