“So you call fame a low motive? I see where your brother’s philosophy comes from.”
“I do not call it a low motive—” Her pause was expressive.
“Nor allow that the Non omnis moriar of Horace has in it something divine?”
“For a heathen—yes.”
“And pray, what would you have the moving spring?”
“Duty.”
“Would not that end in ‘Mine be a cot, beside the rill’?” said he, with an intonation of absurd sentiment.
“Well, and suppose an enemy came, would duty prompt not the Hay with the joke—or Winkelried on the spears?”
“Nay, why not—‘It is my duty to take care of Lucy.’”
“Then Lucy ought to be broken on her own wheel.”