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THE WINDOWthe Reform Bill; sea-birds and butterflies; people;while the sun poured into those attics, which aplank alone separated from each other so thatevery footstep could be plainly heard and theSwiss girl sobbing for her father who was dyingof cancer in a valley of the Grisons, and litup bats, flannels, straw hats, ink-pots, paint-pots,beetles, and the skulls of small birds, while itdrew from the long frilled strips of seaweedpinned to the wall a smell of salt and weeds,which was in the towels too, gritty with sandfrom bathing.

Strife, divisions, difference of opinion, pre-judices twisted into the very fibre of being, oh thatthey should begin so early, Mrs. Ramsay deplored.They were so critical, her children. They talkedsuch nonsense. She went from the dining-room,holding James by the hand, since he would notgo with the others. It seemed to her suchnonsense—inventing differences, when people,heaven knows, were different enough without that.The real differences, she thought, standing by thedrawing-room window, are enough, quite enough.She had in mind at the moment, rich and poor,high and low; the great in birth receiving fromher, half grudging, some respect, for had shenot in her veins the blood of that very noble, ifslightly mythical, Italian house, whose daughters,

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