Toothbrushful

The pigs he describes as weird pictures of porcine woe, with noses so long and pointed that a drove seen rooting about in a cane-piece was mistaken for a pack of under-sized deerhounds lazily picking up a lost scent; as for ham, it would have taken several hogs to supply that necessary part of the sandwiches even for a small picnic; while there was not a toothbrushful of bristles on the whole herd.

She always hoped there might be extra excitement, like Dominic or Benjy or myself putting a finger under the running tap and squirting her, one of us blowing bubbles for her or, best of all, the boys flipping toothbrushfuls of cold water over her.

But as he combed through his dark, dripping hair and poked a toothbrushful of fluoride-enriched paste past his lips, Brody could not bring himself to gaze again at the look of emptiness worn by the shadow of the man he once had been and, at some deep level, wanted desperately to believe he still might be.