TO   THE   LIGHTHOUSE
little wild and harum-scarum about them, who
didn't "scrape their hair off", weren't, as he said
about poor Lily Briscoe, " skimpy". There was
some quality which she herself had not, some
lustre, some richness, which attracted him,
amused him, led him to make favourites of girls
like Minta. They might cut his hair for him,
plait him watch-chains, or interrupt him at his
work, hailing him (she heard them), " Come
along, Mr, Ramsay; it's our turn to beat them
now," and out he came to play tennis.
But indeed she was not jealous, only, now and
then, when she made herself look in her glass a
little resentful that she had grown old, perhaps,
by her own fault. (The bill for the greenhouse
and all the rest of it.) She was grateful to them
for laughing at him. (" How many pipes have
you smoked to-day, Mr. Ramsay? " and so on),
till he seemed a young man; a man very attractive
to women, not burdened, not weighed down with
the greatness of his labours and the sorrows of the
world and his fame or his failure, but again as she
had first known him, gaunt but gallant; helping
her out of a boat, she remembered; with de-
lightful ways, like that (she looked at him, and
he looked astonishingly young, teasing Minta).
For herself—" Put it down there," she said,
helping the Swiss girl to place gently before her