TO   THE   LIGHTHOUSE
saw the chairs, thought them fearfully shabby.
Their entrails, as Andrew said the other day, were
all over the floor; but then what was the point,
she asked herself, of buying good chairs to let
them spoil up here all through the winter when
the house, with only one old woman to see to
it, positively dripped with wet ?    Never mind:
the rent was precisely twopence halfpenny; the
children loved it;   it did her husband good to
be three thousand, or if she must be accurate,
three hundred  miles from  his  library and his
lectures and his disciples;   and there was room
for visitors.    Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of
chairs and tables whose London life of service
was done—they did well  enough  here;   and a
photograph  or two,   and   books.     Books,   she
thought, grew of themselves.     She  never had
time to read them.    Alas ! even the books that
had been given her, and inscribed by the hand
of the poet himself:   " For her whose wishes
must be obeyed " . . . " The happier Helen of
our days"   .   .    ,   disgraceful to say,  she had
never  read^them.    And  Croom on the  Mind!
and Bates on the Savage Customs of Polynesia;
(" My dear,stand still," she said)—neither of
those could one send to the Lighthouse.    At a
certain moment, she supposed, the house would
become   so   shabby   that   something   must   be
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