"I suppose a heditor's about the same as a Cabinet Minister. You've got to keep your place;—that's about it, Mr. Slide."
"We've got to tell the people who's true to 'em. Do you believe that Gresham 'd ever have brought in a Bill for doing away with the Church? Never;—not if he'd been Prime Minister till doomsday. What you want is progress."
"That's about it, Mr. Slide."
"And where are you to get it? Did you ever hear that a rose by any other name 'd smell as sweet? If you can get progress from the Conservatives, and you want progress, why not go to the Conservatives for it? Who repealed the corn laws? Who gave us 'ousehold suffrage?"
"I think I've been told all that before, Mr. Slide; them things weren't given by no manner of means, as I look at it. We just went in and took 'em. It was hall a haccident whether it was Cobden or Peel, Gladstone or Disraeli, as was the servants we employed to do our work. But Liberal is Liberal, and Conservative is Conservative. What are you, Mr. Slide, to-day?"
"If you'd talk of things, Bunce, which you understand, you would not talk quite so much nonsense."
At this moment Mrs. Bunce entered the room, perhaps preventing a quarrel, and offered to usher Mr. Slide up to the young member's room. Phineas had not at first been willing to receive the gentleman, remembering that when they had last met the intercourse had not been pleasant,—but he knew that enmities are foolish things, and that it did not become him to perpetuate a quarrel with such a man as Mr. Quintus Slide. "I remember him very well, Mrs. Bunce."
"I know you didn't like him, Sir."
"Not particularly."
"No more don't I. No more don't Bunce. He's one of them as 'd say a'most anything for a plate of soup and a glass of wine. That's what Bunce says."