Inside Duquet something like a tightly closed pine cone licked by fire opened abruptly and he exploded with incensed and uncontrollable fury, a life’s pent-up rage. ‘No one helped me,’ he shrieked, ‘I did everything myself. I endured. I contended with powerful men. I suffered in the wilderness. I accepted the risk I might die. No one helped me!’ The boy’s gaze shifted, the fever-boiled eyes following Duquet’s rising arm closing only when the tomahawk split his brain.

She meant well. But knew nothing about children and the anguish they suffered.

It was not Quoyle's chin she hated, but his cringing hesitancy, as though he waited for her anger, expected her to make him suffer.

Partridge's fire never brought him to a boil.