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THE WINDOWeffort? She must make it once more. There's thesprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; Imust move the tree to the middle; that matters—nothing else. Could she not hold fast to that, sheasked herself, and not lose her temper, and notargue; and if she wanted a little revenge take itby laughing at him?

"Oh, Mr. Tansley," she said, "do take me tothe Lighthouse with you. I should so love it."

She was telling lies he could see. She wassaying what she did not mean to annoy him, forsome reason. She was laughing at him. He wasin his old flannel trousers. He had no others. Hefelt very rough and isolated and lonely. He knewthat she was trying to tease him for some reason;she didn’t want to go to the Lighthouse with him;she despised him: so did Prue Ramsay; so didthey all. But he was not going to be made a foolof by women, so he turned deliberately in hischair and looked out of the window and said, allin a jerk, very rudely, it would be too rough forher to-morrow. She would be sick.

It annoyed him that she should have made himspeak like that, with Mrs. Ramsay listening. Ifonly he could be alone in his room working, hethought, among his books. That was where hefelt at his ease. And he had never run a pennyinto debt; he had never cost his father a penny135