This is why KM Peyton is so great

This is a  quote from ‘Seventeenth Summer’, the debut appearance of Patrick Pennington. Pennington is an incredibly talented pianist who comes from a lower class social context. In this quote Pennington has just met the ‘Professor’, a gentleman who has offered to help teach him. And it’s a quote that says everything. It is a moments like this that make me remember why KM Peyton is just so outstandingly brilliant.

“[Pennington] knew that … the Professor was going to manipulate him, smoothly and cleverly. He was another of them, telling him what to do. But the Professor was more clever than any of the others. Penn sensed it, and it frightened him. He knew he could neither despise not disobey the Professor. He walked beside him in silence. The fact that he had got out of [Prison] meant very little beside the significance of what he had got into.” (p268/269)