If Barbara Gordon was like a name from a Scottish ballad, Marjory Taylor was the kind of name he heard on the radio sometimes, in English pop songs. Jennifer Eccles. Angela Jones. Marjory Taylor.

Sylvia looked at the tall, dingy houses, the frowzy little shops, the swarms of dirty-nosed children, shrill-voiced, with matted hair, running and whooping in the street, at the slatternly women yelling unobeyed orders to them out of half-glimpsed, cheerless interiors, smelling of cabbage and dishwater.

Shall we carry the umbrella, or chance a rainstorm?

Within a particular batch there are a number of nonconforms sprinkled in some unknown way […]