Mrs. Dalloway

very fine too, very stalwart in her lace, swam up, and they withdrew
into a little room which at once became spied upon, guarded, and a
sort of stir and rustle rippled through every one, openly: the Prime
Minister!

Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English! thought Peter Walsh, standing
in the corner. How they loved dressing up in gold lace and doing
homage! There! That must be, by Jove it was, Hugh Whitbread, snuffing
round the precincts of the great, grown rather fatter, rather whiter,
the admirable Hugh!

He looked always as if he were on duty, thought Peter, a privileged,
but secretive being, hoarding secrets which he would die to defend,
though it was only some little piece of tittle-tattle dropped by a
court footman, which would be in all the papers to-morrow. Such were
his rattles, his baubles, in playing with which he had grown white,
come to the verge of old age, enjoying the respect and affection of
all who had the privilege of knowing this type of the English public
school man. Inevitably one made up things like that about Hugh; that
was his style; the style of those admirable letters which Peter had
read thousands of miles across the sea in the _Times_, and had thanked