. . .

It appalls Tom. There are too many of them. It is as if Edmund’s wolf-gold has infiltrated Tom Friedman’s hat, polluted it with his gold dust or wolf dander, made Tom’s hat a medium for the wolf-gold’s transmission. It is as if Edmund’s hunger is contagious; the halls of the Lethal Magnet School — here, Tom’s concepts become bombastic and overwrought — seem to swarm with the white-eyed white-capped cannibals of Edmund’s house. It is not even strictly against school policy when one of them kills and eats a fellow child; Tom suffers a pang of guilt.

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