23Then he could li lift his eyebrows & sneer; he could "suspect a& all the rest of itlittle sentimental humbug" with the best of them. When Mrs.Ramsay, herself inclined to exaggeration, spoke of waves "mountainshigh" of everyone "drenched to the skin", he would say"certainly it had been a little rough", & his overcoat was "damp, butnot wet through". - He would change his socks - that was all.But when it came to explaining how it was not this that oneobjected to in the [?] little atheist, how one did not mindone wasdidn'thowugliness, & care a strawabout people'smanners & wild thingslittle wretch was clever - (engaging correcting those wrong estimatesthat hewasstupidfor a momentthat were often made of the population of foreign countries, orwhat wereexplaining very obviously accurately the reason the policy of Lordwhigs & tories) when it came to consolidating thosesentiments which but objected to his ugliness, somethingall overdiffused & universal in him - his essence, in short - then itbecame more difficult, &, short of allowing the conversation to bechanged, it was necessary to lodge a more definite complaint -for examplewas what one calledsimplywasto the effect for example that he protested was a prig.But a prig? - what is that? Give him Some one who had noof his ownand hadanyhownatural easy feelings, but had to fake them. Observe him whenthey talked about anything interesting - not facts, or history, ofcourse, for there he was in his element. But supposepictures or poetry; or whether it was not so the loveliestin the worldseenevening there had ever been? Then, how no crab on dryaridland showed more angular & uneasy & until he had thought ofwhich did not something to say which had no bearing uponthe subject, but if you examined into it, merely asserted his ownvirtuevirtue, for he Claim right to his his right to be a plain man,some one who did not like mere beau (that he was for the samereasonrather liked books to have a meaning, pictures to be like something;& was very plain and that you could not expect ?the workingadmire &people to enjoy beauty until they were certain of a nightslodging)he was very like a little crab, blind, discomfited.Until he had given the conversation a little flick, & made itthey werehisbecause he hadthe welfare ofmankind atheart& it might bea beautifulnight, butit was rainobviouslynotthecertainsorts ofsayingbehaved
