“The poor little duckling did not know where to turn. How he grieved over his own ugliness, and how sad he was! The poor creature was mocked and laughed at by the whole henyard.”
“I fear the other girls in the circle will make a mockery of me when I testify,” Mary confided. She sat in the chair and broke into weeping.
I went to put my arm around her. She gripped my hand. […]
Johnathan and I stayed with Mary in that room above the tavern. We quieted her and promised we would be in court.
“Half my life I have waited to come home, and for what? Mocking and disregard? This was not the Pyke he remembered. Or did he remember? He had been so young when they took him away to hold hostage.”
“I would rather my hand were withered off than bring one brick to such a building! […] Perhaps the thing I resented was, that of all your edifices there has not been one at which one could not put out one’s tongue. On the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off out of gratitude if things could be so arranged that I should lose all desire to put it out. ”
“Would to Heaven we had never approached them at all, but had run back at top speed out of that blasphemous tunnel with the greasily smooth floors and the degenerate murals aping and mocking the things they had superseded-run back, before we had seen what we did see, and before our minds were burned with something which will never let us breathe easily again!”
“He turned toward my voice. ‘Am I well?’
His mocking tone was unmistakable. ‘Am I well? Why can’t you just talk like everyone else? Why can’t you just say, ‘How you doin’? You doin’ good?‘”
“When I am come to mine own again, I will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.”
“Fatty and his rich parents, with Buster the dog, move into town and he tries to make friends with local kids Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets, who don’t initially like the loudmouthed boastful new kid.”