“Mrs. Robinson has spared no effort to find Larry Ritchie, a stranger for more than eleven years to Lara. All the while during her mother’s illness there had been the spectre of the home for Lara if her father could not be traced. Mrs. Robinson had been as firm and as positive as Mum. ‘We are getting closer all the time to finding him. I’m sure of it. They’ll find the Man,’ her mother had told Lara over and over during those last weeks of her illness. ‘No child of mine will go to any home. I know Larry will come for you, Lara.’ ”
“There was not a boy on the wharf Johnny did not know. He had made friends with some and enemies of others, and had played or fought with all of them. […] Seemingly in one month he had become a stranger, an outcast on Hancock’s wharf. He was maimed and they were whole.”