THE WINDOW

called him; "the little atheist". Rose mocked
him; Prue mocked him; Andrew, Jasper, Roger
mocked him; even old Badger without a tooth
in his head had bit him, for being (as Nancy put
it) the hundred and tenth young man to chase
them all the way up to the Hebrides when it was
ever so much nicer to be alone.

" Nonsense," said Mrs, Ramsay, with great
severity. Apart from the habit of exaggeration
which they had from her, and from the implica-
tion (which was true) that she asked too many
people to stay, and had to lodge some in the town,
she could not bear incivility to her guests, to
young men in particular, who were poor as church
mice, " exceptionally able ", her husband said, his
great admirers, and come there for a holiday.
Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under
her protection; for reasons she could not explain,
for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they
negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance;
finally for an attitude towards herself which no
woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable,
something trustful, childlike, reverential; which
an old woman could take from a young man with-
out loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl—pray
Heaven it was none of her daughters!—who did
not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to
the marrow of her bones*