“Topthorn, I noticed, always shook his head in the water before he started to drink so that alongside him I was showered all over my face and neck with cooling water.”
I knew that once I left [Topthorn] I would be alone in the world again, that I would no longer have his strength and support beside me. So I stayed with him and waited.
“Topthorn and I were hitched up side by side to an old hay cart and [...] driven up through the woods, back toward the thunder of the gunfire and the wounded that awaited us.”
“I stood in a wide corridor of mud, a wasted, shattered landscape, between two vast, unending rolls of barbed wire. [...] This was what the soldiers called “no-man’s-land.”
“When [Albert’s father] came back into the stable afterward and began to sweet-talk me and held out a bucket of sweet-smelling oats, I was immediately suspicious. But the oats and my own inquisitiveness overcame my better judgment.”
“With Albert riding me, there was no hanging on the reins, no jerking on the bit in my mouth; a gentle squeeze with the knees and a touch with his heels was enough to tell me what he wanted of me. I think he could have ridden even without that, so well did we come to understand each other.”
“Rocky’s first hero was his elder brother Joey __′our kid’ as Rocky always called him. Joey was in prison for stealing but only because, as he told Rocky, he’d been framed. It was only treachery could out a clever fellow like Joey in clink.”
“There is Sylvie, the oldest, the cleverest, and-most days at least-the responsible one; Joey, who though only twelve is the man of the house...sometimes.”
″... he came home and found Joey, Jane, and Sylvie all reading in the front yard. Joey and Jane were sitting on the steps of the porch and Sylvie was sprawled in the hammock, a book in one hand, and chocolate-covered peppermint in the other.”