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116 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEat him. (‘How many pipes have you smoked to-day,Mr Ramsay?’ and so on), till he seemed a youngman; a man very attractive to women, not burdened,not weighed down with the greatness of his laboursand the sorrows of the world and his fame or hisfailure, but again as she had first known him, gauntbut gallant; helping her out of a boat, she remem-bered; with delightful ways, like that (she looked athim, and he looked astonishingly young, teasingMinta). For herself—‘Put it down there,' she said,helping the Swiss girl to place gently before her thehuge brown pot in which was the Bœuf en Daube—for her own part she liked her boobies. Paul mustsit by her. She had kept a place for him. Really,she sometimes thought she liked the boobies best.They did not bother one with their dissertations.How much they missed, after all, these very clevermen! How dried up they did become, to be sure.There was something, she thought as he sat down,very charming about Paul. His manners were de-lightful to her, and his sharp cut nose and his brightblue eyes. He was so considerate. Would he tellher—now that they were all talking again—whathad happened?
‘We went back to look for Minta’s brooch,' hesaid, sitting down by her. ‘We’—that was enough.She knew from the effort, the rise in his voice to sur-mount a difficult word that it was the first time hehad said ‘we.’ ‘We’ did this, ‘we’ did that. They'llsay that all their lives, she thought, and an exquisitescent of olives and oil and juice rose from the greatbrown dish as Marthe, with a little flourish, took thecover off. The cook had spent three days over that