ailroad, and Phineas strove hard to bear his burden
with his broken back. He was obliged to say something about the
guarantees, and the railway, and the frozen harbour,--and something
especially about the difficulties which would be found, not in the
measures themselves, but in the natural pugnacity of the Opposition.
In the fabrication of garments for the national wear, the great
thing is to produce garments that shall, as far as possible, defy
hole-picking. It may be, and sometimes is, the case, that garments
so fabricated will be good also for wear. Lord Cantrip, at the
present moment, was very anxious and very ingenious in the stopping
of holes; and he thought that perhaps his Under-Secretary was too
much prone to the indulgence of large philanthropical views without
sufficient thought of the hole-pickers. But on this occasion, by
the time that he reached Brooks's, he had been enabled to convince
his Under-Secretary, and though he had always thought well of his
Under-Secretary, he thought better of him now than ever he had done.
Phineas during the whole time had been meditating what he could do
to Lord Chiltern when they two should meet. Could he take him by the
throat and smite him? "I happen to know that Broderick is working as
hard at the matter as we are," said Lord Cantrip, stopping opposite
to the club. "He moved for papers, you know, at the end of last
session." Now Mr. Broderick was a gentleman in the House looking for
promotion in a Conservative Government, and of course would oppose
any measure that could be brought forward by the Cantrip-Finn
Colonial Administration. Then Lord Cantrip slipped into the club, and
Phineas went on alone.

A spark of his old ambition with reference to Brooks's was the first
thing to make him forget his misery for a moment. He had asked Lord
Brentford to put his name down, and was not sure whether it had been
done. The threat of Mr. Broderick's opposition had been of no use
towards the strengthening of his broken back, but the sight of Lord
Cantrip hurrying in at the coveted door did do something. "A man
can't cut his throat or blow his brains out," he said to himself;
"after all, he must go on and do his work. For hearts will break, yet
brokenly live on." Thereupon he went home, and after sitting for an
hour over his own fire, and looking wistfully at a little treasure
which he had,--a treasure obtained by some slight fraud at Saulsby,
and which he now chucked into the fire,