Some of those boys had never known happiness. Born orphans, they were worked from the time they could take an order. Picking up pins. Scrapping shit out of the pigsties. Thought stupid, treated as if stupid, like less than beasts, because boys were cheaper, more abundant, more difficult.

So Pleasure Island was the first joy they had ever known. And it was good. And then when they were exhausted from all their delight, they were made better, nobler, with no memory of the hell they knew before. All of them were happier. In the years that followed some of them even learned of love.

But he was not one of those boys.

Even then his father, who loved him, was stopping at nothing to rescue him.