TO THE LIGHTHOUSEof him to rub this in, and make James still moredisappointed; but at the same time, she would notlet them laugh at him. ‘The atheist’, they called him;‘the little atheist’. Rose mocked him; Prue mockedhim; Andrew, Jasper, Roger mocked him; even oldBadger without a tooth in his head had bit him,for being (as Nancy put it) the hundred and tenthyoung man to chase them all the way up to the He-brides when it was ever so much nicer to be alone.

‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs. Ramsay, with great severity.Apart from the habit of exaggeration which they hadfrom her, and from the implication (which was true)that she asked too many people to stay, and had tolodge some in the town, she could not bear incivilityto her guests, to young men in particular, who werepoor as church mice, ‘exceptionally able’, her hus-band said, his great admirers, and come there for aholiday. Indeed, she had the whole of the other sexunder her protection; for reasons she could not ex-plain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact thatthey negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled fi-nance; finally for an attitude towards herself which nowoman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, some-thing trustful, child-like, reverential; which an oldwoman could take from a young man without lossof dignity, and woe betide the girl — pray Heavenit was none of her daughters! — who did not feelthe worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrowof her bones.

She turned with severity upon Nancy. He had notchased them, she said. He had been asked.

They must find a way out of it all. There might besome simpler way, some less laborious way, she sighed.10
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