“And what happened then?”
“Oh, he abused them, and they wanted to throw him into the canal; at least they threatened to do so. And then he challenged the biggest of them to a stand-up fight, and a ring was made and they fought; and certainly it was a strange thing to see Saunders, with his bare arms looking no thicker than a hop-pole, tackling that great fellow, whose right arm was nearly as thick as Saunders’s body. Nevertheless, Saunders didn’t shrink; he stood up to the bargee, and, being a capital boxer, he managed to win the day, and to leave the man he was fighting with nearly blind with two swollen black eyes. And every one said what ‘pluck’ little Saunders showed.”
“Had the bargeman a wife and children?” asked Miss Huntingdon quietly, after a few moments’ silence.
“What a strange question, auntie!” cried her nephew laughing. “Oh, I’m sure I don’t know. I daresay he had.”
“But I suppose, Walter, he was a plain working-man, who got bread for himself and his family by his work on the canal.”
“Oh, of course, auntie; but what has that to do with it?”
“A very great deal, dear boy. There may have been plenty of pluck shown by your friend Saunders on that occasion, but certainly no moral courage. Indeed I should call his conduct decidedly immoral and cowardly.”
“Cowardly, aunt!”
“Yes, cowardly, and mean. What right had he to use, or rather abuse, his superior skill as a pugilist for the purpose of carrying out an act of wrong-doing, and so to give pain and inflict loss on a plain working-man who had done him no harm, and had not had the same advantages of education as himself?”
“O aunt! you are severe indeed.”