Jonathan Lyte Tremain Quotes

“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.”

“Priscilla Lapham. Ever since Rab had taken her home and left Johnny to eat six fried eggs by himself, he had felt differently about Cilla. She had been his best friend during the years he worked at the Laphams’. And then for some months she had been a drag on him. He had not bothered much with her. Overnight that had changed. He was always looking forward to Thursdays and the seed cakes and the half-hour sitting out under the fruit trees with Cilla.”

“He looked in the birth and death room. It was once more used for storage. It seemed strange beyond belief that he had ever lain so long in the room. And in a way he had died in that room; at least something had happened and the bright little silversmith’s apprentice was no more. He stood here again at the threshold, but now he was somebody else.”

“Cilla, waiting and waiting for him at North Square—and then he got there only about when it pleased him. He loved Cilla. She and Rab were the best friends he had ever had. Why was he mean to her? He couldn’t think.”

“Since his accident he had unconsciously taken to wearing his hat at a rakish angle. This, and the way he always kept his right hand thrust into his breeches pocket, gave him a slightly arrogant air. The arrogance had always been there, but formerly it had come out as pride in his work—not in the way he wore his hat and walked.”

“His ability made him semi-sacred. He knew his power and reveled in it.”

“Then Rab began to smile. Everything he had never put into words was in that smile.”

It was up to Johnny to keep in touch with Dove. It was all right for Rab to talk. Rab was training with the armed forces. But what could Johnny do? Not much, it seemed to him, except be bored to death for his country.

“And there’s not one reason why I can’t leave for Lexington too, except you don’t want me.”