TO THE LIGHTHOUSEAnd cook’s name now? Mildred? Marian?—somename like that. Ah, she had forgotten—she did for-get things. Fiery, like all red-haired women. Many alaugh they had had. She was always welcome in thekitchen. She made them laugh, she did. Things werebetter then than now.

She sighed; there was too much work for onewoman. She wagged her head this side and that.This had been the nursery. Why, it was all damp inhere; the plaster was falling. Whatever did theywant to hang a beast’s skull there? gone mouldy too.And rats in all the attics. The rain came in. Butthey never sent; never came. Some of the locks hadgone, so the doors banged. She didn’t like to be uphere at dusk alone neither. It was too much for onewoman, too much, too much. She creaked, shemoaned. She banged the door. She turned the key inthe lock, and left the house alone, shut up, locked.IX

The house was left; the house was deserted. Itwas left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry saltgrains now that life had left it. The long nightseemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, theclammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have tri-umphed. The saucepan had rusted and the mat de-206
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