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

46