"Maybe he could bear that, men have been put in prison and lived through years and years of it, perhaps Laddie could too; I doubt it! but anyway the worst of it is that he just couldn't, not even to save you, spend all the rest of his life trying to settle other people's old fusses.

He despises a fuss.
Not one of us ever in our lives have been able to make him quarrel, even one word.

He simply won't.

And if he possibly could be made to by any one on earth, Leon would have done it long ago, for he can start a fuss with the side of a barn.

But he can't make Laddie fuss, and nobody can.