“I am glad, Walter, that I have satisfied you on that point,” was her reply. “You see there was no sudden excitement to call out or sustain his courage. It was the bravery of principle, not of mere impulse. It was so grand because it stood the strain, a daily-increasing strain, of troubles, trials, and hindrances, which kept multiplying in front of him every day and hour as he pressed forward; and it never for a moment gave way under that strain.”
“It was grand indeed, aunt,” said Walter. “I am afraid my courage would have oozed out of every part of me before I had been a week on board one of those caravels. So all honour to Christopher Columbus and moral courage.”
That same morning, when Miss Huntingdon was at work in her own private sitting-room, there came a knock at the door, followed by the head of Walter peeping round it.
“May I come in, auntie? I’ve a favour to ask of you.”
“Come in, dear boy.”
“Well, Aunt Kate, I’ve been thinking over what you said at breakfast about moral courage, and I begin to see that I am uncommonly short of it, and that Amos has got my share of it as well as his own.”
“But that need not be, Walter,” said his aunt; “at least it need not continue to be so.”
“I don’t know, auntie; perhaps not. But, at any rate, what father calls old-fashioned courage is more in my line; and yet I don’t want to be quite without moral courage as well,—so will you promise me just two things?”
“What are they, Walter?”
“Why, the first is to give me a bit of a hint whenever you see me—what I suppose I ought to call acting like a moral coward.”