Laughter in the Dark (Vintage International)

At ten she learned to ride her brother’s bicycle. Bare-armed, with black pigtails flying, she scorched up and down the pavement; then halted with one foot resting on the curbstone, pensively.

threatening terms of capitalists’ buying the daughters of the poor,

Her love was of the lily variety;

ALBINUS had never been very lucky in affairs of the heart. Although he was good-looking, in a quiet well-bred way, he somehow failed to derive any practical benefit from his appeal to women—for there was decidedly something very appealing about his pleasant smile and the mild blue eyes which bulged a little when he was thinking hard (and as he had ... See more

Her gaiety, too, was like her mother’s—a singular unobtrusive gaiety. It was just a quiet delight in one’s own existence with a faint note of humorous surprise at being alive at all—yes, that was the tenor of it: mortal gaiety.