He was odd. There was a funny white patch in his hair which people stared at. Worse, the curious webbing of skin between his fingers appeared to be strange as well. Often, he would look surreptitiously at people’s hands to see if they had this webbing too. But they never had. Once he had discovered that the cook’s assistant, a fat girl who seldom spoke, was also called Ducket, and he had asked her eagerly, “Are you of my family?” But she had only munched a ginger cake and finally told him: “I dunno.”
