MRS. DALLOWAY
extravagantly, for they had known each other as
children. “Where are you off to?”
“I love walking in London,” said Mrs. Dalloway.
“Really, it’s better than walking in the country.”
They had just come up—unfortunately—to see doc-
tors. Other people came to see pictures; go to the
opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads came
“to see doctors.” Times without number Clarissa had
visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home. Was
Evelyn ill again? Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts,
said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his
very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, per-
fectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed
always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at
Court) that his wife had some internal ailment, no-
thing serious, which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dallo-
way would quite understand without requiring him to
specify. Ah yes, she did of course; what a nuisance; and
felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time
of her hat. Not the right hat for the early morning,
was that it? For Hugh always made her feel, as he
bustled on, raising his hat rather extravagantly and as-
suring her that she might be a girl of eighteen, and of
course he was coming to her party to-night, Evelyn
absolutely insisted, only a little late he might be after
the party at the Palace to which he had to take one of
Jim’s boys,—she always felt a little skimpy beside
Hugh; schoolgirlish; but attached to him, partly from
having known him always, but she did think him a
good sort in his own way, though Richard was nearly
driven mad by him, and as for Peter Walsh, he had
never to this day forgiven her for liking him.
She could remember scene after scene at Bourton—
Peter furious; Hugh not, of course, his match in any