THE WINDOWgotten, and now there was Cam wide awake and Jameswide awake quarrelling when they ought to have beenasleep hours ago. What had possessed Edward to sendthem this horrid skull? She had been so foolish as tolet them nail it up there. It was nailed fast, Mildredsaid, and Cam couldn’t go to sleep with it in theroom, and James screamed if she touched it.

Then Cam must go to sleep (it had great horns saidCam —) must go to sleep and dream of lovely palaces,said Mrs. Ramsay, sitting down on the bed by herside. She could see the horns, Cam said, all over theroom. It was true. Wherever they put the light (andJames could not sleep without a light) there was alwaysa shadow somewhere.

‘But think, Cam, it’s only an old pig,’ said Mrs.Ramsay, ‘a nice black pig like the pigs at the farm.’But Cam thought it was a horrid thing, branching ather all over the room.

‘Well then,’ said Mrs. Ramsay, ‘we will cover it up,’and they all watched her go to the chest of drawers,and open the little drawers quickly one after another,and not seeing anything that would do, she quicklytook her own shawl off and wound it round the skull,round and round and round, and then she came backto Cam and laid her head almost flat on the pillowbeside Cam’s and said how lovely it looked now; howthe fairies would love it; it was like a bird’s nest; itwas like a beautiful mountain such as she had seenabroad, with valleys and flowers and bells ringing andbirds singing and little goats and antelopes . . . Shecould see the words echoing as she spoke them rhyth-mically in Cam’s mind, and Cam was repeating afterher how it was like a mountain, a bird’s nest, a garden,135
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