again on a flower pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree.
“It’s odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet one always wants one’s letters,” said Mr Bankes.
What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if, Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of his meals. Everything about him had that meagre fixity, that bare unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them. She liked his eyes; they were blue, deep set, frightening.
“Do you write many letters, Mr Tansley?” asked Mrs Ramsay, pitying him too, Lily supposed; for that was true of Mrs Ramsay — she pitied men always as if they lacked something — women never, as if they had something. He wrote to his mother; otherwise he did not suppose he wrote one letter a month, said Mr Tansley, shortly.
For he was not going to talk the sort of rot these condescended to by these silly women. He had been reading in his room, and now he
