"That has nothing to do with the pluck! That's all I care about."
"It has everything to do with what you take for pluck. My pluck is only Don Worm."
"I don't know what you mean by that."
"It's Benedick's name, in Much Ado about Nothing, for the conscience. MY pluck is nothing but my conscience."
"It's a damned fine thing to have anyhow, whatever name you put upon it!" said Faber.
"Excuse me if I find your epithet more amusing than apt," said
Wingfold, laughing.
"You are quite right," said Faber. "I apologize."
"As to the pluck again," Wingfold resumed, "—if you think of this one fact—that my whole desire is to believe in God, and that the only thing I can be sure of sometimes is that, if there be a God, none but an honest man will ever find him, you will not then say there is much pluck in my speaking the truth?"
"I don't see that that makes it a hair easier, in the face of such a set of gaping noodles as—"
"I beg your pardon:—there is more lack of conscience than of brains in the Abbey of a Sunday, I fear."