In Alice Munro’s story “Dulse” I read the following. Lydia is at an inn on an island off the coast of New Brunswick sitting at the kitchen table after dinner, playing cards with 3 workmen who are on the island installing telephone cable.
‘Eugene permitted Vincent and Lawrence to tease him about losing at cards, about getting lost in St. John, about women he liked, about being French-Canadian. Lawrence’s teasing amounted to bullying. Lawrence wore a carefully good-natured expression, but he looked as if something hard and heavy had settled inside him – a load of self-esteem that weighed him down instead of bouying him up. Vincent had no such extra weight, and though he too was relentless in his teasing – he teased Lawrence as well as Eugene – there was no sense of cruelty or danger. You could see that his natural tone was one of rumbling, easy mockery. He was sharp and sly but not insistent; he would always be able to say the most pessimistic things and not sound unhappy.
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