"Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birdssinging," she said compassionately, smoothing the little boy's hair, forher husband, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine, haddashed his spirits she could see. This going to the Lighthouse was a passionof his, she saw, and then, as if her husband had not said enough,with his caustic saying that it would not be fine tomorrow, this odiouslittle man went and rubbed it in all over again.

　　"Perhaps it will be fine tomorrow," she said, smoothing his hair.

　　All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn thepages of the Stores list in the hope that she might come upon somethinglike a rake, or a mowing-machine, which, with its prongs and its handles,would need the greatest skill and care in cutting out. All these youngmen parodied her husband, she reflected; he said it would rain; they saidit would be a positive tornado.

　　But here, as she turned the page, suddenly her search for the picture ofa rake or a mowing-machine was interrupted. The gruff murmur, irregularlybroken by the taking out of pipes and the putting in of pipes whichhad kept on assuring her, though she could not hear what was said (asshe sat in the window which opened on the terrace), that the men werehappily talking; this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and hadtaken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her,such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then,"How's that? How's that?" of the children playing cricket, had ceased; sothat the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the mostpart beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemedconsolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children thewords of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, "I am guardingyou—I am your support," but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly,especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually inhand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselesslybeat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction ofthe island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day hadslipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephermal asa rainbow—this sound which had been obscured and concealed underthe other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made herlook up with an impulse of terror.

　　They had ceased to talk; that was the explanation. Falling in onesecond from the tension which had gripped her to the other extremewhich, as if to recoup her for her unnecessary expense of emotion, wascool, amused, and even faintly malicious, she concluded that poorCharles Tansley had been shed. That was of little account to her. If herhusband required sacrifices (and indeed he did) she cheerfully offeredup to him Charles Tansley, who had snubbed her little boy.

　　One moment more, with her head raised, she listened, as if she waitedfor some habitual sound, some regular mechanical sound; and then,hearing something rhythmical, half said, half chanted, beginning in thegarden, as her husband beat up and down the terrace, somethingbetween a croak and a song, she was soothed once more, assured againthat all was well, and looking down at the book on her knee found thepicture of a pocket knife with six blades which could only be cut out ifJames was very careful.

　　Suddenly a loud cry, as of a sleep-walker, half roused, somethingaboutStormed at with shot and shellsung out with the utmost intensity in her ear, made her turn apprehensivelyto see if anyone had heard him. Only Lily Briscoe, she wasglad to find; and that did not matter. But the sight of the girl standing onthe edge of the lawn painting reminded her; she was supposed to bekeeping her head as much in the same position as possible for Lily's picture.

　　Lily's picture! Mrs Ramsay smiled. With her little Chinese eyes andher puckered-up face, she would never marry; one could not take herpainting very seriously; she was an independent little creature, and MrsRamsay liked her for it; so, remembering her promise, she bent her head.