Mrs. Dalloway

man--he seemed awfully odd; quarrelling, perhaps; parting for ever,
perhaps; something was up, she knew; and now all these people (for she
returned to the Broad Walk), the stone basins, the prim flowers, the
old men and women, invalids most of them in Bath chairs--all seemed,
after Edinburgh, so queer. And Maisie Johnson, as she joined that
gently trudging, vaguely gazing, breeze-kissed company--squirrels
perching and preening, sparrow fountains fluttering for crumbs, dogs
busy with the railings, busy with each other, while the soft warm air
washed over them and lent to the fixed unsurprised gaze with which
they received life something whimsical and mollified--Maisie Johnson
positively felt she must cry Oh! (for that young man on the seat had
given her quite a turn. Something was up, she knew.)

Horror! horror! she wanted to cry. (She had left her people; they had
warned her what would happen.)

Why hadn’t she stayed at home? she cried, twisting the knob of the iron
railing.

That girl, thought Mrs. Dempster (who saved crusts for the squirrels
and often ate her lunch in Regent’s Park), don’t know a thing yet; and
really it seemed to her better to be a little stout, a little slack,