TO THE LIGHTHOUSEof red-hot pokers, and there was the Lighthouse again,but she would not let herself look at it. Had she knownthat he was looking at her, she thought, she would nothave let herself sit there, thinking. She disliked any-thing that reminded her that she had been seen sittingthinking. So she looked over her shoulder, at the town.The lights were rippling and running as if they weredrops of silver water held firm in a wind. And all thepoverty, all the suffering had turned to that, Mrs.Ramsay thought. The lights of the town and of theharbour and of the boats seemed like a phantom netfloating there to mark something which had sunk.Well, if he could not share her thoughts, Mr. Ramsaysaid to himself, he would be off, then, on his own. Hewanted to go on thinking, telling himself the storyhow Hume was stuck in a bog; he wanted to laugh.But first it was nonsense to be anxious about Andrew.When he was Andrew’s age he used to walk about thecountry all day long, with nothing but a biscuit in hispocket and nobody bothered about him, or thoughtthat he had fallen over a cliff. He said aloud hethought he would be off for a day’s walk if the wea-ther held. He had had about enough of Bankes and ofCarmichael. He would like a little solitude. Yes, shesaid. It annoyed him that she did not protest. Sheknew that he would never do it. He was too old nowto walk all day long with a biscuit in his pocket. Sheworried about the boys, but not about him. Yearsago, before he had married, he thought, looking acrossthe bay, as they stood between the clumps of red-hot pokers, he had walked all day. He had made ameal off bread and cheese in a public house. He hadworked ten hours at a stretch; an old woman just82
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