face and her gnarled and knotted hands, was at her very merriest and in the
best of tempers. All these things Peter had noticed before Frosted Moses
(so called because of his long white beard and wonderful age) made his
remark about Courage, but as soon as that remark was made Peter's thoughts
were on to it as the hounds are on to a fox.

"'Tisn't life that matters, but the Courage yer bring to it...."

That, of course, at once explained everything. It explained his own father
and his home, it explained poor Mrs. Prothero and her two sons who were
drowned, it explained Stephen's cousin who was never free from the most
painful rheumatics, and it explained Stephen himself who was never afraid
of any one or anything. Peter stared at Frosted Moses, whose white beard
was shining in the fire-place and his boots were like large black boats;
but the old man was drawing at his pipe, and had made his remark apparently
in connection with nothing at all. Peter was also disappointed to see that
the room at large had paid no attention to the declaration.

Courage. That was what they were all there for, and soon, later in the
evening, he would take his beating like a man, and would not cry out as
he had done the last time. And then, at the thought of the beating, he
shivered a little on his tall chair and his two short legs in their black
stockings beat against the wooden bars, and wished that he might have
stayed in some dark corner of The Bending Mule during the rest of the night
and not go home until the morning--or, indeed, a very much better and
happier thing, never go home again at all. He would get a worse beating for
staying out so late, but it was something of a comfort to reflect that
he would have been beaten in any case; old Simon Parlow, who taught him
mathematics and Latin, with a little geography and history during six days
of the week, had given him that morning a letter to his father directed in