TO THE LIGHTHOUSElittle wild and harum-scarum about them, whodidn’t “scrape their hair off", weren’t, as he saidabout poor Lily Briscoe, "skimpy". There wassome quality which she herself had not, somelustre, some richness, which attracted him,amused him, led him to make favourites of girlslike Minta. They might cut his hair for him,plait him watch-chains, or interrupt him at hiswork, hailing him (she heard them), "Comealong, Mr. Ramsay; it’s our turn to beat themnow," and out he came to play tennis.

But indeed she was not jealous, only, now andthen, when she made herself look in her glass alittle resentful that she had grown old, perhaps,by her own fault. (The bill for the greenhouseand all the rest of it.) She was grateful to themfor laughing at him. ("How many pipes haveyou smoked to-day, Mr. Ramsay?" and so on),till he seemed a young man; a man very attractiveto women, not burdened, not weighed down withthe greatness of his labours and the sorrows of theworld and his fame or his failure, but again as shehad first known him, gaunt but gallant; helpingher out of a boat, she remembered; with de-lightful ways, like that (she looked at him, andhe looked astonishingly young, teasing Minta).For herself—"Put it down there," she said,helping the Swiss girl to place gently before her154
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