“The summer had been mad. It had been like a badger caught in a tarred barrel, fed on chilli an forced to listen to chanting monks.”

“It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as 'slightly foxed', although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.”

“He'd done as he'd pleased and even had often enjoyed long runs of luck where he hadn't been caught. But the luckiest moment of his life had been being caught.”

“The aristocrats had to force them to do their jobs. After all, human beings are not badgers. We aren't molded to stoop.”

“..numbed by disappointment and betrayal, like a child who had been awakened suddenly from a summer dream about christmas morning.”

“It had come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers.”