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　「そうね、もちろんいいわ、もし明日、お天気だったらね」 そうラムジー夫人はこたえ、「でも、ヒバリさんとおなじくらい、早起きしないとだめですよ」と言い足した。
　これらのことばが息子に、並々ならぬよろこびを運んできてくれることになった。まるで遠足に行けることはもう決定し、何年も何年も待ったとおもえるほど楽しみにしていた不思議の世界が、もう一晩だけ闇を抜けて一日船を走らせれば、触れられるところにあるかのようだった。この子はまだ六歳だけれど、あの偉大なる種族の一員だった。あれこれの気持ちを切り離しておくことができず、未来のことをかんがえれば、予想されるよろこびやかなしみと一緒くたになって手もとの現実がぼやけてしまう、そんなひとびと。このひとたちには、まだ物心つかないおさなさの頃でも、感覚の歯車がちょっとでも回ると、紡ぎだされた気鬱さや輝かしさの宿る瞬間を結晶化し刺しとめてしまう力がはたらくので、床に座って《陸海軍百貨店》のイラスト入りカタログから絵を切り抜いていたジェイムズ・ラムジーも、母親がしゃべっているあいだ、冷蔵庫の絵に、天に昇ったかのような幸福を恵んでやったのだった。それは、よろこびの縁飾りを持つ絵になったのだ。

　これで一時間いじょうかかっている。こんなややこしい英文書きやがって、とすこしむかつく。

"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.
　To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night's darkness and a day's sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator as his mother spoke with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling—all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of public affairs.