“There was also another funny feeling that he had for the elder sister. For some unfathomable reason, he was attracted to her knees. He had always felt like biting them!”

“When he was a boy he was happy when the men arrived, and in a way wanted them to remain forever--but he was also anxious that they had arrived, that he was no longer alone. The sorrow came from those two feelings--the happiness of company, the anxiety of interrupted solitude. That was what he had felt, he thought, and what to some extent he still felt.”

“He felt that he had to find Salander and hold her close. She would probably bite him if he tried.”

“He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.”

“Funny, she had always thought that thin, bespectacled, intellectual types like Brian attracted her. Lora had to smile at her own naivete. Who would have guessed that she, Lora Harding, would buckle at the knees over a hunk of male beef?”

“Henry went down on one knee. 'Like King Arthur's knights,' Mr. Fogarty had told him, but he didn't feel much like a knight. In fact he felt like a twit.”