TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

Circus." No. He could not say it right. He
could not feel it right. But why not? she wondered.
What was wrong with him then? She liked
him warmly, at the moment. Had they not been
taken, she asked, to circuses when they were
children? Never, he answered, as if she asked the
very thing he wanted to reply to; had been longing
all these days to say, how they did not go to cir-
cuses. It was a large family, nine brothers and
sisters, and his father was a working man; " My
father is a chemist, Mrs. Ramsay, He keeps a
shop." He himself had paid his own way since he
was thirteen. Often he went without a greatcoat
in winter. He could never "return hospitality "
(those were his parched stiff words) at college*
He had to make things last twice the time other
people did; he smoked the cheapest tobacco; shag;
the same the old men smoked on the quays. He
worked hard—seven hours a day; his subject was
now the influence of something upon somebody—
they were walking on and Mrs. Ramsay did not
quite catch the meaning, only the words, here and
there , . . dissertation . , , fellowship . . , reader-
ship . . , lectureship. She could not follow the
ugly academic jargon, that rattled itself off so
glibly, but said to herself that she saw now why
going to the circus had knocked him off his perch,
poor little man, and why he came out, instantly,
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