THE WINDOWmild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high,like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of thesedays by the gunpowder that was in him.

‘Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?’ said Lily, quickly,kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, asin effect she did, ‘I am drowning, my dear, in seasof fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish ofthis hour and say something nice to that young manthere, life will run upon the rocks — indeed I hearthe grating and the growling at this minute. Mynerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and theywill snap’ — when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as theglance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundredand fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the ex-periment — what happens if one is not nice to thatyoung man there — and be nice.

Judging the turn in her mood correctly — that shewas friendly to him now—he was relieved of hisegotism, and told her how he had been thrown outof a boat when he was a baby; how his father used tofish him out with a boat-hook; that was how he hadlearnt to swim. One of his uncles kept the light onsome rock or other off the Scottish coast, he said. Hehad been there with him in a storm. This was saidloudly in a pause. They had to listen to him when hesaid that he had been with his uncle in a lighthousein a storm. Ah, thought Lily Briscoe, as the conver-sation took this auspicious turn, and she felt Mrs. Ram-say’s gratitude (for Mrs. Ramsay was free now to talkfor a moment herself), ah, she thought, but whathaven’t I paid to get it for you? She had not beensincere.

She had done the usual trick — been nice. She109
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