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THE WINDOWrhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as histurn came round again, at the window he bentquizzically and whimsically to tickle James’s barecalf with a sprig of something, she twitted him forhaving dispatched "that poor young man",Charles Tansley. Tansley had had to go in andwrite his dissertation, he said.

"James will have to write his dissertation oneof these days," he added ironically, flicking hissprig.

Hating his father, James brushed away thetickling spray with which in a manner peculiar tohim, compound of severity and humour, he teasedhis youngest son’s bare leg.

She was trying to get these tiresome stockingsfinished to send to Sorley’s little boy to-morrow,said Mrs. Ramsay.

There wasn’t the slightest possible chancethat they could go to the Lighthouse to-morrow,Mr. Ramsay snapped out irascibly.

How did he know? she asked. The wind oftenchanged.

The extraordinary irrationality of her remark,the folly of women’s minds enraged him. Hehad ridden through the valley of death, beenshattered and shivered; and now she flew inthe face of facts, made his children hope whatwas utterly out of the question, in effect, told53