" Perhaps it was inevitable that this quixotic boy should fall in love with Mary Kerr. She was so small and frail, so pathetic in her helplessness, and in her resignation to her fate. The boatman seemed a bully — the most despicable trait in the boy’s eyes; sympathy for her came to him at their first meeting, a passionate pity that wrung his tender heart, and love followed with startling rapidity. "

― D.E. Stevenson , Peter West