THE   WINDOW
rhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as his
turn came round again, at the window he bent
quizzically and whimsically to tickle James's bare
calf with a sprig of something, she twitted him for
having dispatched "that poor young man",
Charles Tansley. Tansley had had to go in and
write his dissertation, he said.
" James will have to write his dissertation one
of these days," he added ironically, flicking- his
sprig.
Hating his father, James brushed away the
tickling spray with which in a manner peculiar to
him, compound of severity and humour, he teased
his youngest son's bare leg.
She was trying to get these tiresome stockings
finished to send to Sorley's little boy to-morrow,
said Mrs. Ramsay.
There wasn't the slightest possible chance
that they could go to the Lighthouse to-morrow,
Mr. Ramsay snapped out irascibly.
How did he know? she asked. The wind often
changed.
The extraordinary irrationality of her remark,
the folly of women's minds enraged him. He
had ridden through the valley of death, been
shattered and shivered; and now she flew in
the face of facts, made his children hope what
was utterly out of the question, in effect, told
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