Mrs. Dalloway

on the malachite table and Hugh was offering Miss Brush with quite
unnecessary courtesy some discarded ticket or other compliment, which
she loathed from the depths of her heart and blushed brick red, Richard
turned to Lady Bruton, with his hat in his hand, and said,

“We shall see you at our party to-night?” whereupon Lady Bruton resumed
the magnificence which letter-writing had shattered. She might come; or
she might not come. Clarissa had wonderful energy. Parties terrified
Lady Bruton. But then, she was getting old. So she intimated, standing
at her doorway; handsome; very erect; while her chow stretched behind
her, and Miss Brush disappeared into the background with her hands full
of papers.

And Lady Bruton went ponderously, majestically, up to her room, lay,
one arm extended, on the sofa. She sighed, she snored, not that she
was asleep, only drowsy and heavy, drowsy and heavy, like a field of
clover in the sunshine this hot June day, with the bees going round
and about and the yellow butterflies. Always she went back to those
fields down in Devonshire, where she had jumped the brooks on Patty,
her pony, with Mortimer and Tom, her brothers. And there were the dogs;